Now That The Dawn Has Come
by Jedi Buttercup
Summary: COMPLETE. In which Tom and Pope undertake to save the human race. Starting with each other. And Charleston. [AU; sequel to "Waiting for the Dawn".]
1. Morning Has Come

**Title** : Now That The Dawn Has Come

 **Author** : Jedi Buttercup

 **Rating** : R/Mature; language and canon-typical violence

 **Disclaimer** : The words are mine; the world is not.

 **Summary** : _In which Tom and Pope undertake to save the human race. Starting with each other. And Charleston._

 **Fandom** : Falling Skies

 **Notes** : A sequel to "Waiting for the Dawn", a Falling Skies Season 3 divergence story. Contains slash between two angsty, foul-mouthed, conflicted survivors of an alien apocalypse, and chronicles the shifting evolution of their family as they do their best to save Earth from the Espheni threat. (Because canon's version ... could have used a little applied logic.)

Title and summary borrowed once again from the Popol Vuh, specifically the Dennis Tedlock translation. Xibalba (as in the title of episode 3.9, "Journey to Xibalba") literally means "The Place of Fear", the name of the Mayan underworld, and I found other plot-provoking things in the text as well. (If you're not familiar with the Mayan story of creation, I do recommend it.) Written for the 2016 Extreme Big Bang; originally posted to DW on July 23, 2016.

* * *

 _"The dawn has approached, preparations have been made, and morning has come for the provider, the nurturer, born in the light, begotten in light. Morning has come for humankind, for the people of the face of the earth."  
— Popul Vuh, Part Four_

* * *

"So I suppose this is the part where I do the walk of shame from the President's quarters," a wry voice drawled somewhere in the darkness beyond Tom's closed eyelids. "Huh, I wonder if that's a first for Charleston? Maybe we shoulda done this in that not-so-Oval Office of yours, then. Just for the principle of the thing."

Tom cracked open his eyes, stretching slowly on the salvaged mattress as he gave up the fight to stay asleep, and pressed the back of a hand to his mouth to cover a yawn. Then he glanced toward the opaque glass doors of his apartment, a converted storefront in the underground mall currently serving as the central hub of the post-apocalyptic metropolis of Charleston, SC. He was glad he already had an excuse for his toes to be curling, because the view before him was extremely appealing: long lines of lean muscle, from calf to posterior thigh to gluteus maximus, disappearing inch by inch into a snug pair of worn blue jeans.

John was facing toward the doors, back still bare but for the dark lines of his tattoos and a few reddish scars, fading souvenirs of the last few years' worth of battles against the alien invaders. Tom traced his gaze down the valley of the man's spine, appreciating the sight, and marveled at how different his life had become from what it had been three years ago- or even one. It had been a long damn time since he'd had the energy, not to mention the luxury, to lie around and simply take pleasure in this kind of moment; it would be a pity to waste it.

"Calling it a walk of shame implies we've done something wrong, Pope," he replied, a warm note of teasing underlying the words. "There's just one thing ... no, two things wrong with that."

" _Only_ two?" John replied, voice thick with skepticism. He paused his reverse striptease with the jeans up but still unbuttoned, turning to look over his shoulder at Tom. Dark eyes lit with amusement under a disheveled fall of slightly wavy, shoulder-length dark hair. "Pray, enlighten me, good Professor."

"For one, as you so often remind me, _I'm_ the leader around here. That means _I'm_ the one that makes the rules ... and under _my_ rules, if it doesn't hurt another human being or aid the Espheni, what's the point of worrying about it?" Tom stirred further, reaching his arms back to link his fingers behind his head as he stifled another yawn. "And two — that would imply that we're _done_. What the hell time is it, anyway? Why don't you forget about getting dressed and come back to bed."

John's grin was smug as he turned fully to face him, more than a little strut in his stance. But there was a certain degree of hackles-up wariness in his posture, too. "Seems a little quick to be playing house, don't you think?"

Sometimes, he reminded Tom of a cat not quite convinced of his welcome. He supposed it would take all those old bad habits — and misconceptions of each other — a little more than three weeks to fully break. Still.

"Don't know if you noticed, but the world sort of ended a few years back. And _somehow_ , a history professor from Boston ended up the President — excuse me, Governor, I keep forgetting — of the biggest bunch of free Americans left. All five thousand or so of us. We don't exactly have time to _play_ at anything." Tom smirked to take the seriousness out of the words. "But who's talking about moving in, anyway? I just don't want to get up yet, and there's a few hours left 'til they lay out the canned pears and oatmeal in the cafeteria."

"All right, all right. Sold." John's grin widened as he strolled back to the bed, putting a knee up on the mattress to lean over for a bristly good-morning kiss. Neither of them had brushed their teeth since the day before, but Tom barely even noticed; they might be able to afford to shower and do laundry on a daily rather than weekly or even monthly basis now, but that kind of thing hardly registered after all the months the Second Massachusetts Militia had spent on the road. While their mouths were occupied, Tom slid his hands around John's flanks, slipping one hand down under the still-loose waistband of the jeans to cop a feel; whatever else you could say about the post-apocalyptic warrior lifestyle, it had a way of producing really _fit_ people.

Things were just beginning to get _really_ interesting when the door swung open without warning. Two years of near-constant war had rewritten a lot more of his instincts than just his hygiene tolerances; Tom was pulling his free hand back to reach for the handgun stashed under the mattress before the identity of the intruder even registered, and he wasn't sure he _wanted_ to know where Pope had been keeping the weapon that suddenly filled the hand not supporting his weight. Both of them immediately turned to aim —

—straight into the face of Tom's eldest, who gaped in comically exaggerated horror for a long moment before pointedly jerking his gaze off to one side and shutting the door behind him.

"Oh, God; I did _not_ need to see that," Hal sputtered. "Dad, what the hell!"

Tom sighed, slumping back against the sheets, and removed his other hand from the back of Pope's jeans. John rolled his eyes as he lowered his Peacemaker, then shifted his weight backwards off the bed to gingerly do up his fly with his free hand. Fortunately, he didn't move out of Hal's line of sight; Tom was wearing a lot less than John was, and not feeling particularly exhibitionist at the moment. Especially not in front of one of his chief military aides ... who just so happened to also be his nineteen-year-old son.

"Shouldn't that be _my_ question?" he replied, wearily. "Seriously, Hal. I thought you learned your lesson years ago about barging into my room in the middle of the night." He'd only walked in on Tom and Rebecca once as a kid, but that had been more than enough for the lesson to sink in.

"First of all," Hal said gruffly to the wall, nose wrinkled, "it's more like the _end_ of the night. And second — so sue me, I saw Anne in the hall on the way over and just plain forgot that didn't necessarily mean you were sleeping alone anymore. Which — since when _aren't_ you sleeping alone anymore?"

"Since — well, tonight, as _if_ that's any of your business. So thanks for that, Junior," John replied for them both, stooping to pick a pair of faded boxers up off the floor and toss them in Tom's direction. "I trust your reasons for interrupting are suitably dire?"

"Uh — yeah. Sorry," Hal cleared his throat and assumed an approximation of the at-ease stance — probably learned from Dan Weaver, who'd done as much parenting of Tom's boys as he had since they'd left Boston. An unavoidable side-effect of Tom's status as one of the Espheni's favorite chewtoys. "You decent yet, Dad?"

Tom thrust his legs over the edge of the bed as he finished settling the boxers around his waist, then bent to snag his own trousers off the floor. They were slightly better quality than anything found in John's wardrobe — Tom's civilian second, Marina Peralta, had _ideas_ about what the Man in Charge should look like when he wasn't in the field, and he'd found it easier to give in than fight her on it — but still nothing that couldn't have been found at a mall, back in the day. Which, he supposed, was only appropriate considering the setting.

"Just about — what's going on?" he asked as he pulled on the trousers.

Hal cast a wary glance over his shoulder, then relaxed a little as he turned to give his report. "You have a visitor. No idea why he came in the middle of the night, but if I had to guess, he wanted as few people as possible to know he was here. Which was a smart move, if you ask me."

"Why's that?" Tom's brow wrinkled as he caught the shirt John tossed him, then hastily shrugged it on, waving off the waistcoat John picked up next. Like hell he was going to don the whole outfit in the middle of the night; whoever the visitor was would just have to deal with the informal version of their leader.

"Considering it's _Cochise_ ," Hal replied, expression as grim as the tone of his voice.

Tom paused in the middle of doing up his shirt buttons, exchanging a wary glance with John. It was partly by John's — and Dan's — advice that the human fighters had been prepared for the Volm to betray their alliance as soon as the Espheni defense grid came down; Tom had arranged to have Dr. Kadar and a few helpers modify a significant percentage of their weaponry with Volm tech, unbeknownst to Cochise, and later evacuated most of their fighters from the battlefield in Jacksonville before Cochise's father, Waschak-cha'ab, could trap them with his 'round up all the humans and send them to Brazil' plan. Neither Cochise nor any of the twenty or so other Volm who'd been quartered in their bunker outside Charleston had been seen since.

Tom liked Cochise a great deal; he was a very relatable person, for an alien. And he thought Cochise had genuinely thought of him as a friend, as well. But they had separate duties and allegiances, and ultimately loyalty to their individual species had won out. What did it mean that he'd chosen to come back now?

" _Just_ Cochise?" he asked his son.

Hal nodded. "Yup. He wouldn't say anything to the patrol that brought him in; just asked to speak with you."

Tom blew out a breath, then nodded and stood, thumbing the last button into place. "John, you see where my boots ended up?"

"Over by the door, I think," John replied, distractedly. He was already most of the way dressed himself, sliding his own boots back on and stomping his feet to settle them.

"You don't need to come with, you know," Tom quirked a smile at him. "Bed's still yours, if you want to catch a couple more hours before breakfast with your daughter."

John raised both his eyebrows at him, though the corner of his mouth had curved up automatically at the mention of Tanya. She was bunking with Lourdes at the moment — John had figured his digs up in Popetown were maybe not the best environment to host a teenage girl, and the junior doctor appreciated having a roommate there to break her out of the terrible nightmares she'd suffered since her experiences under Espheni mind control — but they usually ate at least one meal together a day when possible, and breakfast was easiest to arrange.

"Your alien boyfriend finally deigns to pay a visit, and you think I _don't_ want to be there? Pull the other one, Professor, it's got bells on."

Tom just shook his head at him, still smiling, as he snagged the boots and located a pair of clean socks. Then he turned back to his son at the sound of a disbelieving snort. "Got something else to say, Hal?"

"Oh; no. It's just ... I guess it was naïve of me to think that you guys would stop bickering, now that you're doing ... whatever it is you're doing. But since it's Pope we're talking about, I probably shouldn't be surprised."

"Aw, c'mon, kid. Sometimes that's half the fun," John leered at him. "You can't tell me your relationship with Maggie is always smooth as silk, 'cause if you do, I'll call you a liar."

"Hey. I can't control what you do with my dad, but you _don't_ talk about Maggie, all right?" Hal pointed a finger at him, bristling at the remark.

Tom sighed. He'd never expected his current choice of partner to go over smoothly with most of his family, but there was a limit to what he'd put up with at such an ungodly hour. He retrieved his rifle, slinging the strap over his back, then stepped between Hal and John and gestured toward the door. "You said Cochise was waiting?"

Hal gave John one last frustrated glare, then refocused on his father. "Yes, _sir_. Colonel Weaver had the watch; the patrol brought Cochise to him, and he parked him in a conference room. This way." He turned to push the opaque doors open again, then nodded to the sentry on duty as he held it for Tom to follow.

"So much for a relaxing start to the day," Tom muttered under his breath as he crossed the threshold.

"Not like I didn't know what I was getting myself into with you, Professor," John replied dryly, taking up station beside him. "But I reserve the right to snag an hour of your schedule later on, to make it up to me."

"Wait — that's supposed to be a favor to _you_?" Tom glanced over, sharing a smirk with him.

The light mood didn't last, though; a moment later they were approaching the conference room, and Tom felt the heavy hand of the war press down on him again. They'd had three weeks of peace; but he'd never supposed their victory in Jacksonville had been any more than a beginning. Now the outside world was pushing its way back in, and he could only pray they were ready to meet it.

Hal pushed open the door with a nod; Tom nodded back, then squared his shoulders and stepped through.

* * *

He took in the situation inside the conference room at a glance: Cochise standing stiffly near the chalkboard, turning to blink big liquid eyes in Tom's direction; a uniformed guard in the corner, rifle unshipped but aimed down near Cochise's feet; a crate of some kind on the table, about half a yard on a side and obviously of Volm make; and Colonel Weaver, seated in front of the crate, a distrusting frown on his face as he stared at Cochise. None of them looked particularly happy to be there.

Dan looked back over his shoulder at the sound of the door opening, then nodded a greeting to Tom and got to his feet. His eyes skipped slightly past him to catch briefly on Pope, but other than a slight deepening of the frown, he chose to ignore the elephant in the room and got right to the point. "Sorry to wake you, Mr. President, but I thought you might find this important enough to interrupt your ... rest."

Tom took his cue from Dan's manner and nodded formally back to him, approaching to stand at his shoulder near the table. "I do, Colonel Weaver; thank you. Cochise, it's good to see you, my friend."

Cochise inclined his head in acknowledgement, but his expression didn't warm, even by Volm standards. They weren't unemotional Vulcans, but they _had_ genetically engineered themselves into a warrior species over the course of their own conflict with the Espheni; the resulting cultural pressures had shaped them into a brusque, pragmatic people in general. Cochise was usually more of an outlier, though; Tom was more used to friendly behavior from him, and the difference was unsettling.

"You as well, Professor. Though I fear you will — I believe the phrase is, change your tune — when you have heard the news I bring."

"What a surprise," John muttered under his breath, pulling out a chair on Dan's other side to turn it around and drop into a seated position, arms crossed over the back.

Tom didn't outwardly react, though an apprehensive chill swept through him. He quickly sent Hal back to his duties and dismissed the guard — no need for the rest of the conversation to join the Charleston information chain just yet — before replying obliquely. "I was worried that your father had ordered you to break contact with us when you didn't return to Charleston after his ship arrived."

He'd seen enough of the Volm Commander to be fairly certain Cochise's father wouldn't try ordering the human survivors rounded up and relocated again ... but he'd also seen enough to know that it was probably the inconvenience involved more than an increase in respect that dissuaded him from doing so. He clearly hadn't thought much of Tom and his people, or any humans, for that matter. Once again, Tom had been reminded of the behavior of the European colonists when they'd first arrived in America, and how poorly that had worked out for the natives. Who knew what else Waschak-cha'ab might do in the name of defeating the Espheni without considering the needs and desires of those who actually lived on the planet, first?

"It had been long since we had seen one another, and there was much news to exchange," Cochise replied. "Also, the behavior of the Espheni in respect to this world ... did not match my father's expectations from prior campaigns, and after our first few engagements he relied much upon my experiences to inform his strategies."

"That's an awful lot of past-tense there, Chief. Would I be correct in assuming that his 'strategies' have recently undergone another drastic change?" John said cynically, drumming his fingers against the back of the chair he'd straddled.

Cochise paused again; and in his peripheral vision, Tom saw Dan throwing a sharp, appraising look at John. "Unfortunately, yes," he finally said. "Earth is not our only battlefront with the Espheni. And prior to his arrival here, my father hid our brood mates and hatchlings — our families — in the Alicante 8 cluster, in the hopes that they would escape notice. They ... did not."

Tom swallowed, realizing instantly where this was going. "You received a distress call. And now you have to defend them, or risk extinction yourselves."

Cochise inclined his head again. "As you say. The majority of the Volm fleet will be departing within twenty-four of your hours."

"So, after all his talk about liberating humans from the yoke of the Espheni, he's just gonna up and abandon the whole deal, huh?" Dan put in, bitterly. "I appreciate the circumstances ... but you realize, they're gonna come down on us even harder after you go. Will you be leaving _any_ forces behind to assist?"

"My father didn't consider you much at all in this decision, I'm afraid," Cochise replied, slumping slightly — a major indicator of negative emotion, coming from a Volm. The ones who'd bothered to study humans before arriving on Earth had picked up some familiar body language to go with their familiar body shape — by far the most humanoid of the various aliens they'd met so far — but it wasn't natural to them. "A mere handful of Volm units will remain, scattered about the globe as small recon teams. I have convinced my father to allow me to lead one of them, but we have been ordered not to engage the enemy under any circumstances. We are merely to observe, and discern the form their next move will take."

"So we're on our own again," Tom concluded. He leaned forward, bracing his hands on the back of a chair, mind racing as he pondered what that would mean for Charleston — and all the other human survivors.

The Espheni had pulled back sharply after the arrival of the Volm; there'd hardly been any visible activity since the grid had been brought down, giving Tom's people a chance to rest and regroup. But if the quiet had only been out of respect for Volm weapons and tactics and not because of the losses they'd suffered, the Espheni would undoubtedly swarm back out of the woodwork the moment the last Volm troopship left the solar system.

"In large part, yes," Cochise replied, his body language perking up suddenly as he continued. "However ... my father failed to limit to whom our observations may be delivered."

"...That's why you're here," Tom realized abruptly, a thread of hope stitching through his mood for the first time since he'd stepped into the conference room.

"Yes. I came as soon as I could, so that you would have time to prepare. And ... to bring you this." He pulled a spherical object from a pocket analogue in his Volm uniform, extending it toward Tom. It had the shiny black surface and glowing blue accents that seemed to be a common feature of Volm military design, and a similar, though smaller, shape to the miniaturized EMP weapons the Volm had given them to use on enemy mechs.

For all his doubts about the true aims of the Volm, Tom had never feared personal harm from Cochise; he automatically reached out to take it, curious what their ally had brought. Dan was there before him, though, leaping up to snag the object out of Cochise's hand. "Whoa, whoa. What is this?"

Cochise blinked curiously at him, but answered gamely. "A secure communications device. Its range is limited, but it will allow me to keep you informed of the movements of the Espheni. There are others in the cache as well, if you wish to give your Dr. Kadar the opportunity to examine their inner workings, in addition to a number of scanners, miniature observation drones, and small munitions such as my father's soldiers will not miss."

John waited for no further invitation to pull the crate over in front of him and begin prying the lid loose with his pocket knife. "Well, now. This I gotta see."

"Why?" Tom asked, ignoring John's enthusiasm as he focused on his alien friend. "Not that I don't appreciate the gift as well ... but a few weeks ago, you seemed to have a very different perspective on allowing us free reign with your technology."

"A few weeks ago, I believed that my father's arrival would render such measures unnecessary, for the Volm have never disseminated our technology before. But you are also unlike any species we have ever encountered, and I have since realized that your refusal to trust fully in anything other than your own strength was not only practical, but prescient. Had we succeeded in our aim of disarming and relocating you and your people to Brazil, you would have been left defenseless and easy prey for the Espheni when our fleet's distress call arrived."

"No shit, Sherlock," John groused, then whistled as he finally pried up the lid and began poking at what he found beneath it. "Nice. Looks like Christmas came a little early this year. I guess I can't say you bubbleheads _never_ did us any favors, even if you do fail at your own logic — I mean, you tell us not to apply human judgment to an alien war, and then you turn right around and try to assign alien reasons to human behavior."

"Indeed, and I have attempted to convey as much to my father," Cochise sighed. "Perhaps when the fleet returns, he will listen. But now I must leave before my patrol group informs him of my absence ... and it may be some time before I am able to meet with you again in person. I expect to have actionable intelligence for you very soon, however; the Espheni will doubtlessly resume their activities as soon as our ships depart the planet."

"We'll appreciate anything you can give us," Dan said grudgingly, still turning the communicator over in his hand. "Even a little will be better than the nothin' we've seen these last few weeks. We may've taken down their defense grid, but there's still over a million of their soldiers out there in the United States alone."

"And who knows how many in the rest of the world," Tom sighed. "There's a long road still ahead of us, despite our recent victories — and for your people as well. I wish the Volm the best in their coming battles with the Espheni." He stepped around the table, meeting Cochise's move toward the door with a shoulder clasp, one of the gestures he'd personally taught Cochise in the months since the Volm scouts' initial arrival.

"You as well. Good luck, Tom Mason," Cochise nodded solemnly, returning the gesture. "One thing I have learned in my many months among your people is that the human spirit _is_ the most powerful weapon on this planet. Please, do not lose hope."

"I won't," Tom promised, and watched as he turned to go. The sentry outside snapped to attention as the door opened again; Dan nodded and gestured quickly to the young man, who nodded affirmation before falling in behind Cochise to trail him back to the surface. Not to protect him; it was still not quite light outside, probably early enough that the alien soldier wouldn't draw the attention of too many resentful human citizens on his way out. But the guard would also report whether he detoured by the empty Volm complex, and what, if anything, he removed from the structure if he did.

The door swung shut again, leaving only the three of them in the room, and Tom sighed. "Well?" he asked.

Dan frowned, brows forming a craggy line; he didn't pretend not to understand. "I'd prefer to run these things by Dr. Kadar first," he said, gesturing to the crate with the hand holding the comm, "but I believe he's telling the truth — at least, as he sees it. I've never fully trusted the Volm, and I trust 'em less since meeting Cochise's father, but whatever he says about aliens not operating by human logic, Cochise himself is pretty easy to read. He feels he's let you down; so he's brought us a going-away present."

"Like I said. Alien boyfriend," John snorted derisively, turning away from the box of Volm tech and crossing his arms over his chest. "And a pretty poor one at that. Abandoning you to the whims of the enemy on his daddy's say-so, as if a preemptive apology and a box of cheap trinkets could hope to make up for that."

"That's enough, Pope," Dan snapped, though his gaze was still on Tom's face, looking for a reaction.

Tom didn't have one to give him, not yet, beyond a crushing sense of weariness. With the Volm gone, the Espheni would have a chance to replace the jammer and fuel plant Charleston's militia had destroyed and appoint a new Overlord for the East Coast. And if that happened, they'd be right back where they started: outnumbered, outgunned, and fighting for their very survival, the horizon line of the war pushed back out beyond their vision.

He took a breath, then met Dan's gaze. "Have we heard from Keystone yet? Did President Hathaway's escort make it back in one piece?"

Dan nodded, slowly. "Got a coded radio confirmation from that Lieutenant Fisher late last night. I was going to put it on your desk first thing."

"Good; then they'll probably be willing to listen if we contact them again. We'll have to word the message carefully; let Hathaway know that the Volm have received word of an Espheni ambush on their loved ones, but they'll be back when the situation is dealt with. In the meantime, any communities who've been exposed in the past and can easily relocate probably should; and for the rest, maximum security measures should be taken."

"And what if the Volm _don't_ come back?" John commented, assuming the role of devil's advocate as always.

"Cochise said they will," Tom replied grimly, "and even if you don't believe that — I _do_ believe that the Volm Commander might slightly value the life of his surviving son, at least enough to come back to retrieve _him_. And Cochise won't be happy about leaving us in the lurch again."

"Well look at you, all cynical and distrusting. Guess I'm rubbing off on you already," John smirked.

Tom rolled his eyes at the posturing; he knew it had to be partly for Dan's benefit. Not so much out of jealousy, but to further stake his claim, both on Tom and his position as an acknowledged member of the leadership team. "I've _always_ been pragmatic, Pope; I just choose to aim for the best possible outcome, and strategize accordingly. It doesn't cost much, and I've noticed it has a tendency to improve morale."

"So long as _we_ keep trailing along behind you and preparing for the worst," John drawled, gesturing between him and Dan.

"Exactly," Tom smiled blandly at him. "So I'll need you both to start working on a plan for Charleston — get together with General Porter and start figuring out what we can do to strengthen our defenses immediately. We'll need a full check of supplies, especially mech-metal ammunition for our standard weapons, and an update on the status of the energy weapon upgrades. Speaking of which, is the anti-grid weapon still in the railcar shed?"

"Right where we left it after we brought it back from Jacksonville." Dan nodded. "You think we'll need it? It's a little too big and slow to fire to be much use against Beamers, and it makes a really tempting target for Espheni bombs."

"I don't think we can make any assumptions about the makeup of the force the Espheni are likely to hit us with," Tom frowned, starting to pace in the confines of the room. "We've bloodied their nose every time they've struck us here, so far. And they saw in Jacksonville that we had a lot more Volm tech at our disposal than we'd been letting on. The Overlords are smart; they have to know that their best chance at taking Charleston will be to catch us off-guard, and hit us hard from a direction we won't expect. And we know they have bigger ships; we've seen them. It's not designed as an anti-air weapon, but since its function is basically to overload its target with a massively overkill amount of energy, it ought to be effective enough for the purpose."

Dan nodded sharply at that. "We'll make sure it's ready to activate at a moment's notice. You do realize, though, that we don't exactly have a Volm engineer around to fire the thing anymore?"

"Talk to Anne, and Dr. Kadar; between her experience with the interface the Volm use to operate their medical technology, and his experience modifying their weapons technology, I have no doubt they can figure something out," Tom assured him, more confidently than he felt.

"I'll call 'em in after we talk to Porter," Dan agreed. "Dr. Kadar can go over Cochise's gifts then, as well. Especially those drones he mentioned — might be nice to finally get a few of our _own_ aerial shots of the Espheni deployments around Charleston, if we can get those up and running."

"And me?" John raised an eyebrow. "What's my part in all this? Other than checking in with Lyle at the Nest to make sure the gears are still nicely greased in the civvie sector."

Tom grimaced. "I know I kept you in the dark about a lot of the more sensitive decisions last year — and I can't even apologize, because I didn't really trust anyone beyond Dan and Porter, out of necessity, and the Volm, because I knew none of _them_ could be the mole. That's behind us now, though. We're going to need beefed-up patrols, and an experienced sniper with a Volm anti-aircraft rifle along on each of them; we can't count on Cochise's soldiers anymore. That's going to mean a lot of stress on the Berserkers, not to mention the rest of the Second Mass, since they're still the most experienced fighters Charleston has. You've spent more time with them individually lately than I have, or Porter; I'd appreciate you working with Dan on those assignments."

"I'm going to want that Denny kid out on the likeliest approach, just so you know," John narrowed his eyes at him, suddenly all business. "And yeah, it's because of the spikes, but not the way people are gonna think. I'd ask to put your boy Ben there, too, if I didn't already know you'll probably have him liaising with the rebel Skitters. The thing is, the spiked kids are the only ones strong enough to handle those anti-Beamer popguns freehand; even Tector needs to brace himself before he fires one of 'em, and we might not have a lot of time to react."

Always testing him; life was never going to be easy with John Pope. But then again ... one of the many things the last year had taught Tom was that if he was going to be in a position of so much responsibility, he _needed_ someone like that in his life, always willing to push him and call him on his bullshit. To keep him from letting it all go to his head, or making an important decision for all the wrong reasons. John was far from perfect: argumentative, prejudiced, foul-mouthed, and light on impulse control, just to name a few of his less attractive qualities. But he _fit_ Tom — the Tom he was now, more or less the tribal chieftain of a band of post-apocalyptic refugees — like a lost puzzle piece that had finally clicked into place.

"I have confidence in your decisions," Tom said, smile widening at the poorly hidden surprise in John's reaction. Then he rubbed a hand over his beard. "And now ... I'd better see if I can grab a roll out of the kitchens on the way to my office. I'm going to have to meet with Marina first thing, and Dan, you might want to send Jeanne to me, later; she's more or less appointed herself public works officer since the thing with the Liberty Tree, and last time we spoke she had some ideas about starting movie nights back up. Might be a good idea to schedule something for tonight. Oh, and let me know when the sentry that followed Cochise reports back."

"Will do," Dan nodded to him.

"Lunch then?" John prompted him, gruffly.

"Maybe dinner?" Tom winced apologetically. "It's going to be a long day."

"Just don't forget, you _owe_ me," John said. Then he took a long step into Tom's personal space, barely sparing a glance for Dan, and framed Tom's face with a callused hand.

Kissing John was different than kissing Anne; prickly and possessive and with an underlying volatility that had never been part of Tom's relationship with the doctor. He'd cared for her very much; still did, in many ways. But by the end, they'd frustrated and let each other down more than they'd supported each other, held together mostly by their ties to others. If they'd gone on the road again when they'd had the chance, been able to devote more of their time to one another, things might have worked out differently; but they hadn't. Time would tell whether his new relationship with Pope would stay the course. But he hadn't been disappointed yet.

"Okay, okay, enough of that," Dan growled, somewhere in the background. "Let the President get to work, Pope; we got enough to keep us busy right here."

"Yeah, yeah, keep your pants on," John rolled his eyes as he pulled away. "Have a good day, Professor."

"You too, John. Dan."

Bad news from their allies, a prospective attack looming over them, and a pile of administrative paperwork awaiting Tom's attention: just another Sunday in Charleston.

Their vacation was over; it was time to get back to work.

* * *

Tom spent the rest of the morning and much of the afternoon clearing his desk of any urgent matter that couldn't wait until after they knew how hard the Espheni were going to come down on them, and taking meetings with everyone involved in the preparations. On the whole, morale wasn't exactly high, but it was holding; people used to thinking a day, a week, or a month ahead at most had barely begun to relax into a more stable peace, and seemed resigned to the fact it had been canceled without much warning.

At least they'd been given twenty-four hours; time enough to call in all their scouting and supply parties, secure vital equipment underground, and run an evac drill or three for the folks who lived up top. Not enough to figure out Cochise's drones, though, unfortunately; the interface on the massive Volm energy weapon needed all of Dr. Kadar's attention, and he hadn't had time to train any apprentices to his level of knowledge on Volm tech just yet.

Maybe that could be a job for Matt one day, if Tom could ever talk his youngest son into paying more attention to his lessons. He'd done well helping Anne's Uncle Scott with the radio, back in Acton, and making mech bullets with John. But he'd become pretty fixated on being a soldier like his dad and his brothers and 'The Colonel' lately. And since the skills he was learning would help keep the nearly-twelve-year-old alive, Tom had decided to let it slide for now.

Jeanne Weaver turned up around lunchtime with a bowl of stew — sent by her father, Tom had no doubt — and a few salvaged movies from her 'life is more than just surviving' project. The war was too raw for him to think alien-invasion sci-fi was a good idea, or an action-thriller monster flick, and the ice-skating romance would probably set half the audience crying or heckling the screen. Not a good idea when things were this tense. The origin story, though: the guy who'd found out the hard way that everything he'd thought was vital in life was actually a luxury, and took what had been done to him to reforge himself as a superhero? Tom thought of Ben, Lexie, Denny, and all those tormented and changed in less visible ways by the war, and gave that one the seal of approval.

Besides. If anyone argued the choice? Might also be a morale-booster to encourage folks to bring back their own favorites to add to the pool, if they ran across a selection of DVDs on a salvage run. They could stand to build up the city's library some more, too.

Provided, of course, the Espheni didn't burn it all down, first. Bullets before food before fuel before entertainment, Tom reminded himself; time to worry about working their way back up Maslow's Hierarchy, later.

"Let's not get ahead of ourselves," he muttered, rubbing a hand over his face as he studied the latest consumables inventory. They could stand about eleven days' siege before going on short rations, it looked like, but no more than that; he could only hope that the Espheni reacted quickly, before he had to worry about sending teams out again.

"Talking to yourself already, I see," a wry voice commented from the doorway.

Tom looked up to meet the smirking gaze of his middle son. "Hmm?"

Ben wrinkled his nose and walked in, shutting the door behind him. "I had a hard enough time wrapping my mind around the fact that you and Pope didn't actually hate each other after you came back from that plane crash. But sleeping with him? Clearly, _one_ of you must've gone mad."

He must've talked to Hal. Tom sighed, dropping the pencil he'd been using to make notes and rubbed at the bridge of his nose. "Look, I know it must be weird for you boys, me being with another man —"

"Ugh, it's not that, Dad," Ben shuddered theatrically. "You really think we didn't know you dated a guy or two in college? Mom was very — um, thorough — when she gave us The Talk. No, it's just — _Pope_? Really? We kinda thought, when we got Anne and Lexie back ... I mean, Matt was already starting to call her Mom. We're all a little thrown; and Matt even kind of likes Pope when he's not being an asshole."

Yeah, he was in no way ready for _that_ conversation. "It's ... complicated, Ben. And we don't exactly have time for that, right now. I did ask Dan to send you down here for a reason, you know."

"Sure, fine; but I'm going to hold you to that later, okay? You have to admit, it _is_ a little weird." Ben shrugged, crossing his arms over his chest.

"Yeah, well." Tom gave a tired snort. "What about any of our lives has made sense, the last few years? Which brings me to what I wanted to ask you about — the rebel Skitters. They're still camped outside the inhabited area, right? It occurred to me when we were setting up the evac drills that we don't have a plan for them."

Ben's brow furrowed at that, and just like that, Tom's second son was all business: as much an adult as any of Tom's other advisors, despite his age. The war had stolen so much from them all. "Well, you know they're uncomfortable being around so many humans; and it's gotten worse since so many of the other spiked kids went through the procedure to have them removed. They feel like we're not as committed to the alliance as they are."

And justifiably so, Tom had to admit, since even most of the human fighters who worked with them still felt fairly uncomfortable — to put it mildly — around _any_ Skitters, regardless of whether or not they wore the facepaint of the rebellion. It was hard to blame them for it; not a human being still alive hadn't seen a Skitter kill a friend or family member, or take a child to be enslaved by their masters, the Espheni. But that didn't mean they didn't still need the rebels on their side, particularly since the Volm had been forced to pull back.

"You heard Cochise was here this morning?" he asked.

"Yeah, Colonel Weaver filled us in," Ben nodded. "Did he have a message for the rebels?"

"Not ... exactly. But it appears the Volm won't be needing that complex up on the hill any longer. It was built to stand up to bombardment, and there's a big open underground space that they were using to build the grid weapon. I know Skitters like to nest; how many do you think might be able to fit inside, if we turn it over to them?"

Ben's eyes went wide. "Are you serious?"

"Very." Tom leaned forward, bracing his elbows on his desk and lacing his fingers together. "I wasn't sure they'd go for it, since I know they're even warier of the Volm in general than they are of us. But I had a team do a walk-through after Cochise left, and it looks like his people completely stripped the place before we left for Jacksonville. So as far as I'm concerned, they've ceded title, and I think it could be a lot more useful to the rebel Skitters than it would be to us."

Ben put a hand to his mouth and stared at the floor for a moment; then he nodded. "I'll have to talk their leader about it, but ... that's a very generous offer. I think he'll go for it."

"Good. They should have the rest of today, and probably all of tomorrow to investigate and move in, should they choose to do so. But after that — there's no guarantees."

"I understand. I'll tell them." Ben nodded, then hesitated, giving him an awkward smile. "I should be back in time for the movie tonight, though; Jeanne told me. Sounds like fun."

Torn between two duties, the son he'd once hoped would follow in his scholarly footsteps: Tom's heart ached to see it, but he was proud of him all the same. "You know ... you've put a lot of work into building this alliance, Ben. And one of the things this job has taught me is that building things is a lot more difficult than tearing them down. I want you to know I'm proud of you; you've done an amazing job under very trying circumstances. The Volm may have given us the tools to move ahead, but we wouldn't have lasted long enough for them to reach us if hadn't been for your allies. And people will remember which group stuck by us when the going got tough."

Ben's smile grew more genuine, then, and a little bashful; the teenager peeking out from behind the warrior. "Thanks, Dad. I ... that means a lot."

"Now go on; shoo," he said gruffly, waving a hand toward the door. "If I don't finish a little more of this paperwork before dinner, Marina'll have my hide, and if I'm not mistaken you have some good news to impart."

"Yeah. See you later," Ben sketched a grinning salute in his direction and slipped back into the hall.

Soon enough, it was time for his afternoon lesson with Alexis; truthfully, Tom had forgotten to cancel it amid the chaos of the day, but he didn't mind laying down his pen awhile, and it was no hardship to take Anthony's check-in about the orderly, if grumbling fold-down of Popetown while he assisted her with her reading.

Teaching her wasn't like teaching any of his sons had been; and not just because she'd grown so quickly. His early worry that there'd be no Dr. Seuss in her future, back when she'd still been small enough to cradle in his arms, had proved more prescient than he could have known; there was no Narnia or Harry Potter or Percy Jackson for her, either. It was all Shakespeare, the Constitution, the Bible, history texts and the like, though he'd at least managed to talk her into Grimm's Fairy Tales due to the lessons they were originally intended to convey. It seemed he had a budding sociologist on his hands, though she was still very black and white in her thinking.

How much of that was Lexie's irregular aging and unique brain chemistry, and how much a legacy of the weeks Karen had kept her in the Espheni tower, he couldn't say; probably only time would tell. At least she had the same urge to learn, and the same case of the 'whys' as any of his children; and she still looked to him and Anne for the answers. As much as he worried about her future, he cherished the time he was able to spend with her.

She looked up from her slightly water-stained copy of _The Complete Works of Shakespeare_ as Anthony walked out of the room, a pensive frown on her small face, and stared up at him.

"Daddy?" she asked.

"What, sweetheart? Ready to read the next passage with me yet?"

She shook her head, long dark hair — worn loose like her mother's — sliding over her shoulders. "You think they're coming here," she said.

"You mean the Espheni?"

Alexis nodded wordlessly, worrying at her lower lip with her teeth.

"I'm afraid so, Lexie. But don't worry; we'll be ready for them when they do." He didn't believe in lying to his kids — but he didn't believe in burdening them with more than they were ready for, either.

Her frown deepened a little more, and she fidgeted a bit, picking at the deckle edging of the book's pages. "But why are you afraid? That woman, Karen, who found me and Mom ... she said I would bring peace between humans and Espheni."

Found? Well, that was certainly one way to put it; had no one talked to Alexis about what had happened? Although ... he could understand why both Hal and Anne might not want to discuss their parts in it, and Tom himself had been distracted lately. And who else would bring it up? "You're just one person, Alexis; and you're still very new at it," he replied, soothingly. "The war is not your responsibility, no matter what Karen told you. And the Espheni probably don't even mean the same thing we do when we talk about 'peace'. They've hurt so many people that I have a very hard time believing that they've suddenly changed their minds."

Worryingly, that didn't seem to cheer Alexis up any; her lower lip wobbled as she tucked her arms around her stomach in a self-protective gesture. "But she said I'm part of them. That I'm like her. That I'm Espheni, too."

"Oh, sweetheart." Tom abandoned his chair to kneel beside his daughter, gathering her into his arms; her distress cut into him like a knife. "That might be true; or it might not be. We don't know yet. You still have so much growing up to do. And even if some of your DNA _is_ from them, that won't change anything. I'll still love you. And so will your mother, and your brothers, and everyone else in Charleston. But the Espheni from far away, like the ones coming here, they don't believe in making friends; and they don't just stop fighting. The Volm have known them for a very long time. Do you remember Cochise?"

She nodded. "Your Volm friend."

"Yes. He's the one that told me so. And I know it's true, because he never tells a lie." _Withheld_ the truth at times, generally because he thought he was protecting them, or on his father's orders, but ... well, no need to confuse her with the details.

"Never?" Alexis pulled back a little, dark eyes wide.

He smiled back at her, a little wobbly around the edges but otherwise determined not to give her cause to doubt. "Never ever."

The door opened again as she threw her arms back around him, and Tom looked up into the worried features of Alexis' mother. "Lexie?" Anne asked, cautiously.

"Oh, hey," Tom said, injecting warmth into his voice. "Your mom's here; I think it must be time for dinner. You better go with her; I have some more work to do, but we can finish the act you were reading tomorrow."

Over Alexis' head, Anne widened her eyes at him; Tom shook his head, mouthing 'tell you later'.

"Okay, Daddy," Alexis said, squeezing her arms extra-tight. "Love you."

"Love you, too, princess."

He couldn't quite keep his worry out of his voice; Anne's lips went thin at the sound, and she mouthed back a sharp-edged 'you'd better' before smoothing her expression out into a fond, welcoming smile.

Lexie took her hand, and waved a carefree hand at Tom before following her mother out into the hall.

"Jeanne told me there's going to be spaghetti tonight; we finally had enough tomatoes for the sauce. You haven't had it before, but I think you're going to love it," Anne's voice floated back to him, deliberately cheery.

Tom shut the door behind them, then sank back into his chair and pressed his face into his hands.

* * *

Some time later — he couldn't have said how long — the door opened again, and a disgruntled presence in dusty jeans and leather jacket strolled in and threw himself into the chair on the other side of the desk.

"So much for dinner," John said dryly, tossing a bowl onto the desk with a _thunk_. It smelled like the promised noodles and red sauce; any other day, Tom probably would have inhaled it immediately and gone looking for seconds, but ...

He looked up from his contemplation of Dr. Kadar's quick-and-dirty DNA report on Lexie and gave John a wan smile. "Sorry. I guess I must've lost track of time. I'm not feeling very hungry."

John snorted. "Lie; lie; truth," he said, dark eyes flashing irritably. "Eat it anyway. And tell me what you're so upset about while you're at it. You know you always feel better when you get all the crap off your chest."

That was rich, coming from a man whose own mouth tended to mask a hell of a lot of damage. "Not in the mood. Especially not if it's just going to make _you_ angrier," Tom countered.

"Ah. Let me guess, it's about one of the kidlets. And judging by the puzzle graph there on your desk, I'm going to go out on a limb and say it's Alexis," John drawled. "And what new miracles has the princess graced us with today?"

The subject of Tom's kids, apart from Matt, had always been touchy with John; less so since they'd finally reached an understanding, but Tom hadn't yet figured out the limits of his increased tolerance. Between Hal's episode with the eyebug, the spikes left over from the Skitter harness in Ben's back, and the obviously unnatural aspects of Lexie's aging, the alien influence in their lives offered a lot of provocation to a man who still referred to the Espheni and Volm by derogatory nicknames and preferred not to be anywhere _near_ the rebel Skitters. John may not have actually been as racist as he'd come off at their first meeting, years ago now, but he was definitely xenophobic — a category the majority of humanity fell into these days, unfortunately.

"No new miracles," he conceded. "It's more ... did you realize, no one's ever debriefed her about her time with Karen?"

John's eyebrows flew up, and he straightened out of his casual sprawl to stare at Tom in disbelief. "She was a _toddler_ , Tom. Of course no one did. Unless ... are you telling me she _remembers_ that shit?"

"Very clearly, it seems like. Anne did say she'd heard Alexis saying recognizable words to her as young as a few days old, before a baby's eyes are even supposed to be able to focus, so I do believe it's _possible_ ," Tom replied, grimacing. "I just don't _want_ to."

"What the hell did that collaborator bitch do now?" John groaned, jumping to his feet and pacing restlessly. "We didn't kill her quickly enough to suit me."

"Me either, believe me," Tom sighed, propping his elbows on the desk and running his fingers through his hair as his eyes caught on the DNA report again. "Karen told Alexis that she was Espheni, too; and that she was destined to bring peace between humanity and the Overlords."

"You don't believe that, right?" John scoffed. "I mean, even assuming their definition of 'peace' is anything like ours, which I seriously doubt ..."

"It doesn't matter what _I_ believe," Tom replied, grimly, "though of course I don't. Not entirely, anyway. There's too much evidence otherwise. What matters is that _Lexie_ believed it, to the point that she was confused we were so worried about them coming here ... and upset that I'd hate her, too, after I explained it to her. I tried, but ... how can I really make her understand when she has the intelligence, but not the context or experience, to grasp the answer? She might look nearly Matt's age now, but she's not even six months old!"

John made a low, growling noise in his throat, though his expression was ... conflicted. "God knows killing Skitters and their fishhead masters is the most satisfying job I've ever had, and I'll happily go _on_ killing them until the last one's twitching in its death throes," he said. "But that kid of yours ... unless she goes bugfuck like Karen and starts killing people for the Overlords, she oughtta know she's got nothing to fear, no matter what's in her DNA. I'll even tell her so if you think it'll help. Seen it up close and personal myself often enough."

A little of the tension drawing Tom's shoulders tight relaxed at John's ill-tempered rambling; he might be talking about Tom's 'forgiving people thing', but way he said it told Tom a lot about John's own feelings on the subject, even if he wouldn't — or couldn't — actually say it aloud. The ebbing frustration left room for a slight upward tug at the corners of his mouth, and Tom took a deep breath and reached out to take the bowl of spaghetti.

"She's unreasonably attached to her Uncle John too, you know. Drives her Uncle Dan a little crazy, actually."

John snorted, avoiding his gaze. "Feeling possessive, huh? Ought to just go ahead and change that man's last name to Mason. Or do the clan thing, you know, and tack it on afterward. Dan Weaver Mason. Jeanne Weaver Mason."

"Alexis Glass Mason. Tom Mason Mason?" Tom chuckled. "Easier than adding 'of the Second Massachusetts Militia' to identify family, I suppose. Though you realize, that would also make you ..."

John caught onto the implication just in time, wagging a finger at him. "Aw, hell no. Eat your damn spaghetti, Tom. We got us a movie to watch, and you know Jeanne won't let 'em start until you show up."

Tom obediently took a bite, winding several slightly off-color noodles up on his fork, making sure they were sufficiently coated in sauce, and then shoveling the resulting portion into his mouth. His eyes fluttered briefly shut at the taste — he wasn't sure what they'd used for flour, and it was missing a lot of the spices he was used to, but _damn_ , it really was spaghetti — and he abruptly became aware that he actually _was_ hungry.

"Mmm. Probably not as good as you could make, but. Remind me to compliment the cook. I wasn't actually planning on attending the movie, though. I know I owe you, but I'm really not in the right frame of mind for a date night right now."

"A date night? Don't be stupid." John crossed his arms over his chest, watching avidly as Tom took another forkful of spaghetti. "It's not like I plan on staying for the whole thing, either. But we have a better chance of getting away clean and _not_ having someone interrupt if you let everyone else see how not worried you are first. _Mister_ President."

"Ah. So it's a _date_ night," Tom snorted, letting the title thing go. It wasn't worth arguing whether he was President or Governor anymore, when Charleston would be the first line of defense regardless. Hathaway's people had already radioed back, saying they'd be relocating and might not answer calls for a while; kind of hard for a man to serve as President when he was entirely out of touch with his constituents.

John's smirk shifted to an outright leer. "Be a good boy, and maybe you'll find out."

The bowl was down to a third full; Tom rolled his eyes and twirled up another bite. "Tanya won't mind if we leave early?"

"Tanya sings your fucking praises, and you know it. And I already had two meals with her today. Don't want to overload her with too much of her wicked old man's company."

Personally, Tom thought Tanya Pope was as worried about disappointing her 'wicked old man' as John was about scaring _her_ off, particularly since she'd been the younger of his two children and witnessed less of his erratic behavior before he'd been convicted of accidental manslaughter five years prior to the invasion. They'd only been back in one another's company for three weeks, which wasn't much in the grand scheme of things; about as long as Tom had had to get to know _his_ daughter, in fact. But they'd go at their own pace.

"How's she taking to working in the infirmary?" he asked next. The third reason she was rooming with Lourdes: the older girl was mentoring her in a sort of work-study apprenticeship. They could always use more hands in the med ward, and Tanya had some experience from the group she'd lived with in Florida.

"Better than your next-to-littlest does in school; and you're not gonna distract me that easily. You about done?"

Tom swallowed his last bite, then put the fork down and eyed John frankly, remembering the view from that morning. He was tempted to lick the bowl clean in front of him, but figured that might be a little much. "Sure you don't want to take a shower first?" he suggested, gaze lingering somewhat south of John's face. "You look like you had a long day."

"'Bout as long as yours, I expect; and nice try. C'mon." John grinned at him, then strolled over and retrieved the rifle Tom habitually propped at the end of the desk, holding it out to him. Security blanket, Second Massachusetts Militia style: he never went anywhere without it.

"Oh, all right. I guess it's not worth fighting over ... or staying here to shove a few more pieces of paper around." Tom carefully folded up the DNA analysis and tucked it into an inner pocket of his jacket. Then he took the rifle and gestured good-naturedly to the door. "After you."

-(1/10)-


	2. A Close-Up Encounter

_"They were blinded as the face of a mirror is breathed upon. Their vision flickered. Now it was only from close up that they could see what was there with any clarity."_  
— Popul Vuh, Part Four

* * *

At first, John didn't know what had woken him. Or even if he was actually awake, and not just dreaming a particularly pleasant dream. A soft mattress beneath him, sheets smelling of laundry soap and sex instead of smoke and dirt and blood, a warm body tucked at his back; to a man who'd been through nearly three years of post-apocalyptic hell and five years of prison before _that_ , he might as well have found himself in Heaven.

His nerves were jangling like they did when an out-of-place sound woke him in the field, though; alertness thrummed through him, clearing the fog from his thoughts between one blink and the next. He was in Mason's quarters, judging by the furniture and the patriotic painting on the wall ... which meant the body at his back was none other than the Professor himself.

Well, shit. John hadn't meant to fall asleep in Tom's bed. Hadn't the night before, either, or the night before that, but at least he'd had an excuse both times. The first night, the softness of the bed — and the, ah, release of tension — had caught him off guard. The second night, Tom had been stressed as hell about the Volm's news and the latest developments with his daughter, and John had been disturbed enough by his moping to do something about it. A third time, though? That was the start of a pattern ... and he didn't _do_ that kind of coupley, romantic nonsense anymore. It was a vulnerability; one he'd learned the hard way only bought him trouble.

A low, wounded sound broke the silence, interrupting his self-castigating thoughts, and the bed shifted as Tom stirred behind him. The sound was familiar — almost _too_ familiar, dredging up memories of torture and captivity only a few weeks old — and John immediately rolled over, staring into a pale, distressed, sleeping face.

"No. No ..." Tom muttered almost inaudibly, tossing his head on the pillow.

"Ah, hell," John muttered, reaching out to shake the other man's shoulder ... but stopping just short of actually touching. He'd belatedly remembered what had happened the last time he'd woken the man out of a disturbed slumber; it hadn't been pretty. "Mason. Tom, wake up! You're dreaming."

Probably about what happened in that Skitter palace in Boston. Tom never seemed to lose sleep about anything that happened to _him_ , but his family was another story entirely. Ever since John had tracked him down for skipping dinner two nights ago, Tom had been preoccupied, enough that he'd actually told John some of what had been going on with Alexis. He'd even interrupted Dr. Kadar's work on the big Volm gun yesterday, according to the Second Mass soldiers John had guarding the doc, to ask him to run another set of DNA comparisons — a task that would have been better done by Dr. Glass, but of course Tom hadn't wanted to worry _her_ about it.

Self-martyring asshole. He could beat himself up all he wanted, but _not_ to the extent that it interfered with _John's_ peace of mind.

"Have to ... have to see it ..." Tom muttered again, muscles tensed like he was bracing for something horrible.

"Mason!" John repeated firmly, propping himself up on an elbow to speak directly into the man's ear. "We're not in Boston anymore. Wake the fuck up!"

This time, he got through: Tom went suddenly still, the familiar frozen awareness of a man startled to action, not relaxing back into sleep. "...Pope?" he said thickly after a long, wary moment, one hand sliding silently up under the pillow where he kept a sheathed blade a handspan long. John had found it accidentally the first night he'd slept over; he wasn't sure whether he wanted to know if it had always been there, or if had only made its appearance since Anne Glass had left Mason's bed. Questions to ponder.

"You were expecting someone else?" he replied, very dryly.

The tense line of Tom's shoulders slumped with relief, and he shifted in the bed, turning over to face John. His eyes were bloodshot, but his expression thoughtful as his gaze wandered around John's face.

"Sorry," he said, stifling a yawn. "Nightmare."

"Figured," John replied. Then he gave into impulse — might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb — and reached out to trace the edges of Tom's profile, pushing sweaty hair out of his face and scratching fingernails lightly through the beard along the edge of his jaw.

Tom's eyelids fluttered shut again, and the noise he made this time was a lot more pleased with the world.

"Didn't ... expect you to still be here," he murmured a long moment later, blinking as John withdrew his fingers.

John shrugged, carefully nonchalant. "Gotta be out at the crack of dawn again to stand watch. Woulda been more of a pain to go find wherever Lyle parked my shit just to get up again in a few hours."

"Uh-huh," Tom replied skeptically, a brief spark of amusement lightening his eyes. Then he went all serious again, a pinched expression tightening his face. "Probably gonna get ugly today. We got yesterday for free, but ..."

"I heard the scouts' reports same as everybody else. Before you did, even," John reminded him. "Volm lit out just like Cochise said they would, yesterday morning; a whole flock of Beamers screamed off up north a few hours later. Wouldn't be surprised if the northernmost pickets start pulling back in this morning."

The Espheni had likely used the last three weeks to repair their command structure and consolidate resources — because wherever the Volm had been fighting, _if_ they'd been fighting and not just blowing smoke up everyone's asses, it sure hadn't been anywhere near Charleston — and it didn't take a genius to realize what would be their A-number-one target the minute the local fishheads remobilized their forces. John had assigned most of the surviving Second Mass soldiers to front-door duty under Tom's authorization, and had no doubt they'd be welcoming visitors, one way or the other, before the sun finished its arc across the sky.

Tom let out a gusty sigh, then scrubbed his own hands over his face. "I'm so fucking tired of this war."

"Aren't we all," John snorted. Then he squinted over at the clock and pushed off the covers, reaching for the duffel he'd left on the floor beside the bed. He hadn't actually slept nude since the first night — no sense inviting more inconvenient interruptions — but he did have to be on the line in a little over an hour. Dawn was a bit before breakfast these days, though. "Don't worry, you've got about three hours to get your President face back on before your morning meetings. Maybe the situation won't be as bad as you think."

"Is that optimism, coming from _you_?" Tom replied, incredulously. Then he huffed a laugh and pushed his side of the covers off, scratching at his ribs as he stood.

The man was wearing threadbare boxers and not much else; all wiry muscle, dark hair, pale skin, and scars, some much older than anything the Espheni could have inflicted. Nothing like the mental image that would have first leapt to mind at the title of 'Professor', back in the day; a warrior's body, not much different from John's own.

Something stirred south of his belt buckle, and John contemplated tipping the glass of water on his bedside endtable all over Mason's head. But that would probably just make things worse, rather than dampening them down; even muddy and half-drowned and obstinate on the banks of an ice-cold stream, the man had been infuriatingly attractive. "Don't know where I could possibly have picked it up from," he drawled.

Tom gave him a highly skeptical look over his shoulder as they continued to dress. "Me, neither," he snarked back. "Let me know when you find out, huh? Because if even the fatalist of the Second Mass thinks I need a pick-me-up, I must look pretty worked over."

"Pretty, I'll give you," John leered. "Worked over would take more time than I've got this morning."

Tom snorted, but a smile crept back into the corners of his eyes. "Promises, promises," he said, and went to the dresser to pick out something else monochrome and Peralta-approved to wear for the day. "There are some things I probably should get done before breakfast today, anyway; no telling when I'll be able to get to them if the war does end up back on our doorstep."

John read between the lines easily enough on that, but let it go; if it wasn't fucking the man up, or posing an immediate threat to the group, there was no point pushing him to talk. Tom Mason could out-stubborn a cat, as members of _every_ species to visit Earth, humanity included, had lately discovered the hard way. "Try to keep your ass off the front lines today if it does, huh? They take you out, they win — shut your mouth; we've heard them bitch about you often enough to know that's how they think — so there's no point making a target of yourself and getting everyone around you killed, too. You hear me?"

Tom opened his mouth, then closed it again as John spoke, and lifted his eyebrows at the concluding question. "I'm sure the men would appreciate your concern for them," he replied lightly.

"I'll take that as a yes," John chided him, stomping into his boots and running a quick finger-comb through his hair to catch the worst of the sleep-induced snarls.

Tom went silent a moment, watching him; then he turned away to shrug on a shirt. "Watch yourself too, all right? I don't want to have to give that news to your daughter," he murmured behind the shielding fabric.

"Haven't met an alien that could kill me, yet. So now that we're both convinced of each other's invincibility ..." John rezipped his duffel and swung it up on his shoulder, making sure he could still reach his weapon with his other hand. Then he headed for the door, not in the mood for a lengthy goodbye.

Tom caught him just short of walking out with a hand to his bicep. Half-dressed in shirtsleeves and an open vest, the Professor looked distractingly like an Old West Marshal about to deliver a stern warning. But his expression hinted at something deeper; something that made John's stomach lurch.

"I mean it," Tom said, voice quiet and intense. "Don't you dare die on me today."

John studied him, cocking his head to one side as he considered how to respond. He couldn't just — say the same. However far he'd fallen for the man, the words just wouldn't come. But this _was_ the apocalypse. One of them really could be dead by nightfall. And for some reason, Tom Mason seemed to have decided that John Pope's welfare was essential to his peace of mind. How he'd have laughed if he could've seen this, two years ago.

"You told me once that if I weren't there, being me, all you'd have to keep you going was hate," he finally replied.

Tom swallowed, then nodded. "That's true."

"What makes you think it was any different on my end?" John gave him a faint, cynical smile.

Tom looked startled at the concept; then, strangely, cheered. "You know," he said wryly, "my grandmother once told me some people are put on earth just to test us. I was never quite sure what that meant, until I met you."

"Shut the fuck up while you're ahead," John told him, and stopped the Professor's mouth with a farewell kiss.

* * *

The first sliver of molten sunlight over the horizon found him picking his way into position alongside Lyle, as close to a second-in-command as he had among the Berserkers, though John was technically in charge of the entire defensive line on this particular day. There'd be no crouching in a ruin, paying more attention to their thermos and smuggled snacks than to the lines of approach while he was playing at warlord in Weaver's place. And no Little Man running errands for them, either; they'd all stocked up on batteries and ration bars before moving out.

"Here we go again," Lyle muttered, settling himself behind a broken wall with a clear view of the rebuilt I-526 bridge leading out into unfriendly territory. "Day two. Let's hope we don't run into any not-so-friendly fire, this time."

"Don't think we're gonna have to worry about that," John grunted. "Any wannabe patriots tooling around in Humvees today are probably gonna get their asses fried before they get anywhere near us."

"Think so?" Lyle frowned. "What makes this time different from any of the others? Wasn't like the Volm ever did us much good out here, anyway."

"Yeah, well, they didn't have to, did they? They just had to be here. They took down a few Beamers now and again, lent us their intel and some of their ordnance, basically made sure the Espheni knew they were around and _could_ act, if they wanted to. But now they're _not_ ... and according to Mason's Volm boyfriend, his people don't normally let the natives keep any of their toys. That means the fishheads are gonna think they can roll right over us now, any time they want. And I don't know about you, but I've never known the bastards to hesitate when they've got the advantage."

Lyle made a scoffing noise at the mention of Cochise, but nodded at the rest of the explanation. "Makes sense, as much as anything these alien bastards do." Then he cut a sideways glance over at Pope, a perturbed expression on his face. "Speaking of the Professor ..."

John stilled. He hadn't expected much trouble from Lyle on the subject of where he chose to put his dick, unlike some of the 'phobes who drank their liquor down at the Nest. For all his rough edges, Lyle was a straightforward, loyal soul. And so far, he had in fact kept his mouth shut about any contrary personal opinions he might have. But this was the first time he'd had the opportunity to say something when it was just the two of them together, since the victory party after Jacksonville when John had let the celebratory atmosphere go to his head.

"Go on," he said, carefully nonchalant as he watched Lyle out of the corner of his eye. The sky had lightened considerably over the last few minutes; he could see the big man's expression clearly. "Speak your piece."

Lyle shook his head, but he didn't look angry, or disgusted; more ... bemused? "All those times me and Craze said we were ready to take off whenever you said the word, and you always said you had a plan. I gotta know, man. Was this what you had in mind?"

John snorted. Lyle damn well knew better; but John would take good-natured teasing over the more typical response, any day of the week. "If it makes you feel better to think this is all some plot to secure power, sure," he drawled, relaxing some of the tension in his shoulders. "Or if you think it'll calm down some of the hotheads in the Nest, feel free to spread it around. But, no. If I ever thought about the future where him and me were concerned, I always figured we'd kill each other eventually. Fucking him instead really wasn't on the menu."

Lyle made a thoughtful noise. "So what changed?"

John thought back to movie night, hanging back as Tom had paused to greet Jeanne Weaver at the door. Cap's daughter had been waving her hands excitedly about some damn thing, probably the mostly-stale popcorn someone had dug up as a treat for the event, and Tom had been nodding back, wearing that irritatingly benevolent expression he pulled on like a cloak when it was time for him to go a-Presidenting.

That was what most people thought of when they looked at Mason, John suspected; that, or the heart-felt conviction of his speeches, motivating the populace of Charleston and the Second Mass before them to keep on keepin' on. For a few of them, Lyle and the rest of the Berserkers included, that image probably also included the set of his jaw and fierce accuracy under fire, or the way he always seemed to get the job done, no matter how ludicrous or impossible the plan. None of that heroic shit had ever impressed _John_ , though. It was the raw ugly truth underneath that had finally hooked him in the gut, and wouldn't let him go.

It was the Mason who'd picked fights with him when his unnaturally controlled temper finally broke; the Mason who'd laughed in the midst of torture and taunted an Espheni to her face; the Mason who'd shook in John's arms during a bout of soul-crushing grief; the Mason who'd finally admitted that he wasn't intrinsically superior to John deep down, that had finally captured his attention. But it wasn't really that anything had _changed_ about him, other than John's perspective. So what could he say to Lyle that wouldn't let down the John Pope image?

"I don't know, man," he shrugged. "One day I just looked up and realized I'd turned him into the boogeyman, you know? Easier to hate one guy than shake your fist at the heavens. But it turns out, underneath all the bullshit, he ain't all that bad. And I gotta say ..." he finished off the explanation with a smirk, "the perks ain't half bad, either."

Lyle stuck a finger in his mouth and made a gagging noise, though he still looked more amused than anything else. "TMI, bro. Just wanted to know what the sitch was; I don't need no details."

"Feel free to not dislike him on my behalf anymore, if you want," John replied magnanimously. "Oh — and if any of Peralta's bunch thinks to back-check just how long I've been doing spy shit for him, feel free to hint about that time I ditched the Second Mass to go scout with Anthony and Tom ran the Berserkers for me while I was gone."

"You mean that time he kicked your ass for taking Jimmy's compass, and you got pissed and ran off into a Skitter ambush?" Lyle gave him an incredulous look — then shook his head with a disbelieving chuckle. "Except no one from Charleston was there for that, just the Second Mass; and none of the Second Mass are gonna say a word against Mason in front of the VP. Damn. Couldn't have done much better if that _had_ been your plan."

The walkie-talkie clipped to John's belt squawked unintelligibly before he could decide how to reply; he gave Lyle a knowing smirk, then turned up the volume and lifted it to his mouth, depressing the button. "Command, this is Pope. Say again?"

"...word from the Volm," a clipped voice said on the other end; it sounded like Porter under the static interference. "Report ... column of Mega-mechs moving ... toward Charleston. Also spotted ... being loaded ... bunch of Beamers. Watch yourselves, gentlemen; estimate ... early afternoon."

"Roger that. Early afternoon," John replied, sharing a long, grim look with Lyle. Then he changed his walkie to the local channel to pass the orders on to the rest of the soldiers out there with him. No way to spin this one; they were definitely in the shit now. The only question was how deep it was gonna get.

* * *

The northern scouts started showing up an hour or so later: motorbikes sucking fumes, horses lathered, riders pale and exhausted. One of the last of the bikers, Nico, had been a Berserker since just after the battle in Fitchburg; John pulled the man down behind his and Lyle's piece of wall and shoved a water bottle into his hand.

"Command said mechs are on the move; you get a look at 'em?" Lyle asked, offering a ration bar. They hadn't had any advance warning from the withdrawing scouts, nor from Weaver's strike group, which would have left Charleston the minute the Volm intel came in; but then, they hadn't expected any, given the fact that they weren't sure just which frequencies the Espheni, their slaves, and their tech were capable of overhearing.

Nico waved it off. "The big ones," he nodded, taking a long pull of water. "I waited it out 'til they reached my position; didn't stick around to see how many there were, though. Fuckers move fast. I bugged out and got here as quick as I could. You think this is it?"

"Looks like," John nodded to him. "Better go on down and report, maybe see if you can catch a couple winks while you're there. You'll be no good to us falling asleep over your rifle, and I'm sure there'll be plenty of fire and brimstone to go around by the time you're up again."

Nico gave him an acknowledging nod, then braced his hands on his thighs and pushed back to his feet, turning to look deeper into the city. "Hey, looks like a runner headed this way; that razorback Mason kid. Maybe one of the others brought back better news."

"Watch your mouth," Lyle grunted, with another of those sidewise glances at John — as if they both hadn't said the same thing, and worse, as little as a month ago. How times did change. "He got anyone with him?"

"Nah, just one of them big-ass rifles," Nico shook his head, giving them a skeptical look. "Anyway, I'd better get moving. Later, guys. Good luck."

"Wonder why he's coming out here?" Lyle wondered aloud as Nico fell into a slow, weary trot back into the city.

John thought he might have an idea. It was a surprise, though; Tom had already assigned him Denny. "S'pose we'll find out. Keep an eye on the bridge, though; I'd hate to get caught off guard this close to go-time."

"Will do, boss," Lyle snorted, and shifted back up into position.

A moment later, the middle Masonet dropped down next to John, looking insufferably bright-eyed and not at all weighted down by the weapon slung over his back. It was a pity Dr. Kadar hadn't been able to scale the Volm anti-aircraft rifles down much when he'd begun modifying Charleston's native weapons with the technology, but something about the capacitors or barrel length or some shit meant it didn't have the oomph to take a Beamer out if it got much smaller. That took it out of the casual carry range of most original-model human troops.

"Ben," John nodded to him, civilly. "They got you running messages?"

"Not today," Ben smiled tightly back at him. "Dad said you asked for me?"

John snorted. "If by that you mean I told him I wanted you and your sister-in-arms both, but I'd settle for Denny 'cause I figured you'd be busy? Yeah, I did. The cockroaches not in need of your services today?"

Ben automatically glanced down the line, directly toward the building where Denny was set up, before returning his focus to John; more spooky shit to do with the harness stubs in their backs, he was sure. Fair set his spine to crawling. But he didn't have to like 'em to make use of 'em.

"The last of the rebel Skitters arrived this morning; they're all set up in the old Volm complex, now. And since none of the scouts are reporting enemy Skitter movements, or even normal sized mechs, they've decided it would be better if they sit this one out." Ben spread his hands as if to add, _so here I am_.

"I just bet," John commented, sourly. The only way to make Skitters truly useful outside of hand-to-hand combat would be to put Volm weapons in their hands, and they had neither the training nor the grip size to be very effective at it. Not to mention, half the city — including John, no matter _who_ gave the order — would be up in arms the minute they started passing out guns to Skitters. "Lucky us. Well, you know where I put Denny; I've also got Tector and Ox up on overwatch at the other end of the line. You got your pick of positions otherwise; just keep an eye out for potential blue-on-blues."

Ben scowled, rocking back on his heels. "If you're worried about me fragging my own side ..." he began, indignantly.

"Cool your jets, kid." Just about every time John talked to the sixteen-year-old, he seemed to find some new way to wind him up. Occasionally, that was the whole point ... but not while they were prepping for battle, with half the Second Mass listening in. He'd forgotten about the thing with the kid accidentally shooting his dad that time. Not long before John had tried to blow Tom up, actually. Good thing the man was so hard to kill. "I'm just sayin', watch your geometry; you hit a Beamer at the wrong angle, you might knock it down right over top of our position. I'd just as soon not bury any more Second Mass today."

"Oh," Ben replied, looking away. "Yeah, all right. I _have_ fired one of these before, you know. How about the Highway 17 bridge — you station any out that way?"

John nodded. Had his father's problem-solving mind, this one, at least when he was paying attention; worth remembering, even if John still found the youngest brother the most tolerable of the lot. "Yeah; a few, mostly snipers from the First Continental. Won't be as mobile as you and Denny, but if they get any attention out there, it'll probably be spillover from us; if the fishheads are coming in force from the north, there's no reason for them to go the long way around. And if there's anything worse headed our way than a few Beamers and Mega-mechs ... well, we'll blow that bridge when we come to it." He bared his teeth for emphasis.

"Got it," Ben said, nodding and sliding the rifle's strap around to hold it ready. "Is there any particular spot ..."

"Pope, they're here!" Lyle interrupted the conversation, stiffening in place and pointing up over the green fields on the other side of the bridge.

"Just pick one, kid!" John said hastily, then scurried back to the wall, snagging the field glasses he'd brought along and lifting them to his face. Sure enough, the distant, rapidly growing silhouettes of several Beamers were visible to the north ... and beneath their flight, a glint of light shone off something tall and mechanical. _Several_ somethings tall and mechanical, stomping along at speed. And ... shit, just how many Beamers _were_ there? They looked like a flock of oversized birds already, more than he'd ever seen in one place since the initial invasion. Where the hell had they got all the fuel?

"Incoming. Incoming!" he yelled into his walkie-talkie, first on the command channel, then the local. "Long guns, fire as you bear; everyone else, brace yourselves!"

He dropped the walkie-talkie then as the intercom system came to life in the town square, sounding the alert siren; that was the cue for any non-combatants still above ground to take shelter immediately. He heard the sound of a Volm weapon activating to one side, and looked over to see Ben taking a stance next to Lyle.

"For what we are about to receive, may the Lord make us truly thankful," the kid muttered in an ironic tone, squinting as he tracked one of the incoming aircraft with the muzzle of his rifle.

"Amen," John snorted. "Growing up in your dad's household, I'd have expected an ' _Ave, Imperator, morituri te salutant_ '," he added, eyes fixed on the rapidly approaching targets.

"Are you kidding me?" Ben scoffed. "Dad's more of a Patton guy. ' _The object of war is not to die for your country, but to make the other guy die for his_ '. Or planet, in this case."

"Amen to _that_ ," Lyle agreed, then swore. "Damn, that's a lot of 'em."

"They're in range!" Ben called, gritting his teeth as he fired his first shot. Three other glowing blobs of energy leapt skyward to join it, aimed at the Beamers swooping over the fields; two of them hit, sending the damaged crafts spinning end-over-end down to the grass, but the other two targets changed direction unexpectedly, breaking sideways and flying parallel to the river.

"Nice shot, kid," John said; no two guesses which gunners had hit. "What the hell are they ..."

The two flying along the river made another sharp turn — upward this time — as something fell from their undersides on the city side of the river. John automatically crouched for cover, but whatever the things were that had been loaded on the Beamers that morning, they were a lot bigger and heftier than mere bombs; they speared down into the soft soil like a pair of high-tech standing stones, bracketing the old interstate. Then the next wave of Beamers approached, and Ben fired again, grunting as the rifle kicked against his shoulder.

This time, only one of the shooters hit their mark — and again, the surviving Beamers broke to either side, dropping more of the strange metal spikes into the landscape just beyond the ones already placed. There were two of the impromptu pillars to the left of the bridge now, and three marching off to the right. As John watched, a thin latticework of green light sputtered to life, connecting them to each other, looking like nothing so much as a downsized version of the old planetary defense grid: horizontal lines running parallel to the ground crossed by angled beams connecting higher points on one post to lower points on the next. They'd left only one gap: the space between the two bracketing the highway, keeping a path clear for the incoming Mega-mechs.

"Oh, fuck," John realized, fumbling for the walkie-talkie again. He'd spent too long behind razorwire to mistake what the Beamers were building for anything but what it was. Apparently the Volm weren't the only ones who had detention camps on their minds ... and he somehow doubted the Espheni version would be all that concerned with their residents' welfare. They sure hadn't been the first time around; he remembered what Tom had said about that deluded woman who'd tried to turn him and Weaver over to the Skitters in Boston. "It's a fence! If you can't hit the Beamers, shoot the fence posts!"

Two of the rifles immediately switched aim; John saw shots impact both fence posts before Ben fired again, echoed by the fourth rifle in Tector's hands. Two more Beamers fell — but the pillars didn't, shedding the impacts of Denny's and Ox's shots in flares of green light. The things were shielded, somehow. And where there'd been five, now there were seven.

"Man, they don't miss a trick, do they?" he muttered.

"Here we go," Lyle said grimly, swapping his standard rifle for a Volm-tech handgun as the Mega-mechs reached the gap in the fence. "If they're trying to fence us in, why the mechs? Why not just seal it?"

"To wreck our stuff and take Mason out, of course. Give us nothing to rally around," John spat. "I don't know what they want pen us in for when they've spent so long trying to kill us — but I doubt our fate's going to be pleasant, either way. Take 'em down!" He shouted the last three words loud enough for everyone in the next several buildings to hear, taking a bead on the foremost Mega-mech as it crossed the bridge and began shooting its way through the ruins. _Literally_ through them, aiming at the buildings, not the people.

Somewhere behind the thing, he saw one of the Second Mass soldiers slip away from his hide, bent low to provide a smaller target. The guy was carrying some kind of explosive device — ANFO, grenades, Volm tech, John couldn't tell which at that distance, though his body language made its purpose clear — and angling toward the fence; John held his breath as the guy reached the bridge, ducking behind the rail at the near end as more mechs advanced.

Sabot rounds and Volm-tech energy blasts both lashed out from the rest of the line to strike the leading Mega-mech, impacting on its legs and weapon-bearing arms. It staggered, firing one last blast toward the building Denny was using for cover, sending dust and debris billowing out of the first floor windows; then it collapsed, twitching in the dirt like a turtle turned on its back. Ben fired another shot at the flying Beamers, now rushing over the river in greater numbers, while John fired a few more bullets into the downed droid; Ox's rifle left off its careful, measured targeting to fire a near continuous stream of blasts at the fence posts on the opposite side of the highway from the one the sapper had chosen.

"Denny!" John yelled, forgetting himself. However he felt about the spikes, the kid was only a couple of years older than his daughter, and Tanya would be crushed; she thought Denny was the bee's knees. Then he scrabbled for the walkie-talkie and tried again, triggering it between shots at the second Mech in line. Nevermind Tanya; it would be just his luck to get one of the Second Mass's two darling little supersoldiers killed before the battle even properly got started. "Denny, you still in one piece in there?"

Ben snorted, then fired again, this time echoed by a blast from a window several yards down from Denny's prior position. "She says fuck you, Pope; it'll take more than that to kill her," he answered for his friend, freaky hearing picking up her reply without electronic assistance.

"She's not the only one," John said, shaking his head as the left-side fence posts continued to shed concentrated energy blasts. Then he focused, saving his breath for the next droid — and the next — while Ben and Tector continued to pour fire into the sky. "Keep it up! Don't let them through!"

The last Mega-mech of the current batch stepped off the bridge — and behind it, the hidden soldier slipped out of its shadow, darting toward the nearest post. He lifted the package in his arms, approaching it, and then —

Green light flared, setting off an explosion where the man had stood. Nothing was left behind.

"Fuck!" John swore, redoubling his fire. So much for that idea.

He couldn't have said how many Mega-mechs they took down over the next long minutes of deafening battle; the droids' weapons reached farther than even the regular Volm-tech assault weapons did and shattered the structures the Second Mass were using for cover. More walls and roofs began to crumble, sending John's soldiers scrambling for newer, safer positions and diluting the amount of bullets they were able to pour into the enemy.

They were making the droids pay dearly for every yard they won; but for every yard they won, people were dying or otherwise getting knocked out of action. Unlike the Espheni war machines, those lives could not be easily replaced. And the further the line was pushed from the river, the harder it was for any of their weapons to hit the incoming Beamers; more and more of the flying craft were surviving to drop their ominous cargo, stretching the laser-beam fence further across the face of the city. John gave the order to refocus the long guns' fire on the mechs to try to clear the way for an advance back toward the bridge, to blow the thing before the situation got any worse, but no matter how many droids they knocked down, they just kept on coming.

John was about to call Command for reinforcements — most of the experienced guys not already with him were out with Weaver, but he'd take even the greenest troops if that would give his men a breather — when Denny called out from her new perch. "Benji! Do you see that? There's something back where the mechs are coming from — a big black shape of some kind. I can't tell if it's smoke, or what!"

There were a lot of fragmented buildings blocking their view of the river, now; John was getting only glimpses of the radioactive glow of the new fence between ducking and firing at the Mega-mechs. Ben was still with him and Lyle, but at Denny's call, the teenager frowned up at a half-crumbled four-story structure across the alleyway to their left. "I can't tell either — I'll try to get a better look!" he called.

"Ben — Ben!" John hissed after him; but the kid didn't so much as pause, just slung his rifle over his back, bolted across the alleyway, rolled to avoid a mech blast, then scurried up the side of the building like an oversized, sucker-toed lizard. John had no illusions that Tom would ever forgive him if he let one of his kids get killed; hell, the man still hadn't gotten over Anne running away with their daughter and practically handing her over to Karen, not that he'd ever said as much aloud. But there was no point spending more effort than he could safely spare to check the kid, either; this was war, and Ben was, just like his daddy, a Fighting Mason.

John poured a burst of mech-metal rounds into the one that had been shooting at Ben, knocking it staggering into another soldier's fire, and swore under his breath. "Fucking Masons. Still going to be the death of me, I swear."

Lyle chuckled, unhelpfully. "Just remember, we coulda been in Mexico, bro."

"And miss this delightful party?" he quipped back. "What's a few cervezas and palm trees, compared to this?"

"I see it! I see it!" Ben interrupted from his new perch with a shout. There was a slightly panicky note in his voice that John didn't like; it took a lot to make the kid show any weakness these days. "It's a ship! A big one! Maybe fifteen or twenty times the size of a Beamer, just hovering out there!"

A chill went through John's veins at that thought. No two guesses on what it was doing there; if the Espheni were trying to turn Charleston into a prison, that meant a warden, and the fishheads preferred to travel in style. The Second Mass could take down all the Beamers and mechs they liked without making so much as a dent in one of those midsize spacecraft; there was only one weapon in Charleston that might have a chance to shoot it down.

Mason's spidey senses at work again. The professor was one hell of a strategist; no real handle on relative risk — which was hilarious considering his complaints about John's own fitness as a soldier — but he practically had a sixth sense for picking the least worst of available options, at least when his family wasn't in danger. That had rubbed at John like a cheese grater on bare skin when he'd thought the man didn't grasp the costs of his crazier decisions; now that he knew otherwise, it still made him wonder where Tom got the nerve to go through with them. And more determined than ever to remain the questioning voice, to ensure the man never drank his own Kool-Aid.

He lifted the walkie-talkie again. "Hey Mason — what's the status on that grid weapon?"

"Say again? Who is this?" A staticky voice answered back, barely recognizable as General Porter's. The sound had been bad all day; the Espheni getting their asses back in gear seemed to really be screwing with the airwaves.

John rolled his eyes. "This is Pope! What's the status on the grid weapon, General?" he shouted back.

"Dr. Kadar ... it active," a different voice replied; Mason. "But we can't ... from the shed without ... rail line."

Well, that made it about as useful as tits on a boar, didn't it? Unless ... John chewed his lip a moment, thinking about what they knew and suspected regarding Espheni sensor capabilities, then made a suggestion. "Power it up anyway! It doesn't need to move, they just need to think it can!"

"...good will that do?" John could practically hear the frown in Mason's raspy reply.

"Just trust me!" he replied, not bothering to form a more detailed explanation. With the connection as bad as it was, he'd have to send a runner to make sure it all got through, and the way things were going they didn't have time for that. But that big gun had to put out a hell of an energy signature ... and after Jacksonville, there was no way the Espheni wouldn't know what it meant.

No reply came through for a long handful of seconds; John swore, glancing up to where Ben was returning fire on the mechs again, keeping the lane clear while John was distracted. "Mason, just do it!" he tried again.

"Standby," came the impersonal reply — General Porter again this time, not Mason.

"Shit," John muttered, swapping walkie-talkie for weapon again. The fence stretched along the whole populated front of the city now from what he could tell; the Beamers were starting to swing further in, turning up the flanks of the fortifications, remaining just out of weapons range. It wouldn't take much longer for them to complete the circuit, and John really, really didn't want to see what the aftermath of _that_ would look like.

He didn't have long to wonder, fortunately. His ears suddenly twinged, and while he was working his jaw to clear them, a low sound climbed up into audible range: the unmistakable thrum of the giant grid gun, charging.

"That's more like it," he crowed, craning his head around his current shelter to eye the next incoming batch of Mega-mechs crossing the bridge. The monstrosities took several long, echoing steps into the ruins of Charleston ... then abruptly slowed and froze in their places. Beyond them, the latest flight of Beamers turned sharply well short of the river, curving back toward their launch point. The gun's sound grew even louder ...

...and Ben let out a whoop, shaking a fist from his perch. "They heard _that_! The ship is leaving!"

Several more voices picked up the refrain from there, all of them familiar to John, as the frozen line of mechs backed up a step, then another, then turned and stomped away.

"Are they retreating?"

"They're retreating!"

"Tick, Tick, Boom!"

"Oh, yeah, that's more like it!"

"How do you like us now!"

"Hold your horses, guys!" John cautioned, raising his palm in a halting signal. "Make sure they're really gone before we celebrate. And don't forget, there's still that fucking fence to deal with!"

They'd had a lucky break, but it didn't change much of anything, in his opinion. What was to stop the fishheads from simply coming back later? Or if they did decide Charleston was too tough a nut to crack, dropping in on some less well-defended settlement instead? If they were starting to think of adult humans as a resource as much as they always had children malleable enough to be harnessed, rather than just a nuisance to be exterminated, then the war might be entering a whole new phase of suck.

It was almost enough to make John wish his own fate was the only one he still cared about. Every happiness was a hostage to fortune, they said, and the Fates had rather had it in for humanity lately. But you pays your money, you takes your chances, they also said; it was far too late for him to back down, now.

* * *

Wind-down after the battle took longer than usual that day; being in charge of more than just the Berserkers meant more responsibility in the aftermath, tasks John couldn't just shuck to go crack a bottle in the Nest anymore. He sent Ben back to his dad with a preliminary report, then delegated as much as he could to Anthony, the most well-regarded of the lieutenants Weaver had left him. The former cop gave John the suspicious eye the entire time they talked, but took the orders without argument, professional as you like despite whatever rumors he'd been listening to. The remaining tasks John _couldn't_ delegate — including compiling the final lists of the dead and wounded — were almost as grueling as the battle itself had been.

It turned out the soldier who'd charged the fence had been Nico's friend Zack, also one of John's Berserkers since the unit had put itself together out of the barrel scrapings of the Second Mass. A year and more he'd fought beside the guy, and there wasn't even anything left of him to bury. It was such a fucking waste.

The sick irony was that even before John reported for the full after-action debrief, a couple hours after the debris settled, the fence that had snuffed Zack out like a candle sputtered and went dark on its own. It was as if the thing had run on batteries, and only been set up with a limited charge. Once the glow was gone, it didn't react to anything they threw at it. He could only guess that there would've been some more permanent power line connected to it if the Espheni had managed to finish tying the noose; as it was, Mason would have to assign a team with cojones of steel to knock the fence posts down later and make sure they could never be reactivated.

Fortunately — or unfortunately, depending on one's perspective — John wasn't the only one with less than pleasant news to bring to the meeting. Weaver's team had gone to seek out the Espheni site the Volm had located while it was assumed to be empty from fielding the attack on Charleston, a quick lightning blitz to deny the enemy resources. Tom and Weaver had thought it worth the risk, given the opportunity provided by Cochise's advance intel. But the base had kept more mechs in reserve than anyone had anticipated, as well as a swarm of Skitters; they'd been forced to withdraw without even attempting the mission. The fishheads had _definitely_ found some new way to fuel and expand their forces, quicker than even their worst estimates had anticipated.

Tom looked around at all of the usual suspects as the meeting wrapped up, grim lines carving deep furrows around his mouth. "The important takeaway from this," he said, all President and very little John's Mason, "is that we're still here; we survived the first wave of the enemy's counteroffensive, and now we can work on figuring out how to defeat the next stage of this war just as we defeated the last."

"We're not going to be doing much of that if we have to keep manning the front line, anticipating that level of offensive, every day," John pointed out.

Tom nodded tightly, not quite meeting his gaze. "Dr. Kadar thinks he's figured out how to link the Volm scouting devices to the tablets Cochise brought us; we should be able to step back down to more normal levels of deployment in the next few days, using those to augment our recon teams. Although we _will_ need more engineers — if any of you know of anyone with experience in heavy vehicle maintenance, railroad maintenance, or any other unusual mechanical repair, we need to begin working on a way to convert the carriage for the Volm grid gun to something we can more flexibly deploy. Right now it's restricted to places we can access via Charleston's rail lines, and as we discovered during today's defensive action, that limitation might cost us in future."

"Why does Dr. Kadar have to take the time to figure any of this shit out at all, if Cochise was just here?" Anthony spoke up, arms crossed over his chest. "We sure could've used those spy drones today; would've been nice to know just how many mechs we were facing. Or if Weaver had known there'd be no point attacking that base — we really could have used him on the front lines today. Might have lost fewer people if we had."

A couple of months ago, John might have taken that as an insult to his own leadership skills; then again, a couple of months ago, he wouldn't have imagined Tom or Weaver would allow him that much responsibility in the first place. He doubted it even factored into Anthony's criticism, or the man would have chosen other targets for his complaints; it wasn't his judgment the man was questioning here, it was Tom's. People had _always_ been leery about Tom's decisions regarding the Volm, John usually included. Not this time, though.

"Man said it a few weeks ago, Anthony; or weren't you paying attention? Bubblehead's got orders, and heaven forbid he violate the letter of 'em. A crate of goodies he might be able to explain away; damn that crazy human leader for getting his clever hands on a stash of Volm gear!" John wagged his finger in Tom's direction in mock admonitory fashion. "But actually showing us how to use it? Stop, do not pass go, do not collect 200 credits."

"I'd prefer the term bubblehead never show up in the transcript of one of these official meetings," Tom said dryly, though his expression didn't crack at all; he still looked like a living cast of one of those war hero statues. "But yes; that's pretty much what I figure. So I count us lucky to have received as much material assistance as we have. I won't repay him for his renewed friendship by making his position here more difficult with his own people; it's therefore up to us to make the most efficient possible use of that windfall. Any other questions?"

He braced his hands on the conference table, glancing around the group again; and when no one commented — though several glances bounced between him and John — he nodded. "Dismissed, then. General, Marina, we'll meet again in the morning to go over revised assignments and start assessing the feasibility of moving the civilians back out of emergency quarters. Everyone else, sleep well tonight; you've earned it. Dan, if you'll stay back?"

"Of course," Colonel Weaver nodded, kicking back in his chair as the others got up to go.

John frowned hard, but Tom still didn't glance his way. What the hell was up with the man? He'd been urging John not to die on him just that morning; now, he wouldn't even look at him.

Ego, John, he reminded himself; it might not be about him at all. But regardless, he wouldn't get to the bottom of it in front of Weaver, who blew hot and cold himself on whether he approved of John's association with Tom.

He got up, gave an exaggerated bow, and mimed doffing a hat in the President's direction. Then he stalked out of the conference room, headed for Tom's office. Odds were the professor would stop there next. And it came equipped with both a collection of high quality liquor and a well-stocked bookcase, an acceptable substitute for the wake probably already going on at the Nest.

He chose a book off one of the shelves, a copy of the Art of War with commentary that he hadn't had the chance to read before, then kicked back in Tom's chair with a couple of fingers of scotch and settled in to wait.

About twenty minutes passed before he heard raised voices approach down the hall, and he got up to put the book away. Mason, definitely ... and Dr. Glass? John frowned and sidled closer to the door, eavesdropping shamelessly.

"...not trying to tell you what to do," Tom was saying, in a rough, low voice, "It's just, Ben mentioned that they've been missing you, especially Matt. I don't mind if you still spend time with them; or even if Matt wants to keep calling you Mom. As long as you're not planning on leaving again anytime soon ..."

"And there it is again! I wish you'd stop bringing that up every time I get justifiably upset at you! All right, so maybe it's been a few days since I helped Matt with his homework, but can you blame me when every third word out of his mouth lately is about Pope? I'll make it up to him later, I just don't want to hear him singing that man's praises when I _know_ you're keeping secrets from me about Alexis again. She's _my daughter_ , Tom."

"It's ... complicated, Anne," Tom replied, wearily.

"Yeah? Well, then, uncomplicate it. Aren't you supposed to be good at that kind of thing, Professor?" She wasn't giving him an inch.

Mason gave a frustrated sigh. "Karen didn't keep her in stasis, you know. Not the whole time, anyway; not like you said she did with you. I don't know what all she put in Lexie's head, but part of it was that Lexie was just like her, and that she was supposed to bring peace between humans and Espheni."

" _What?_ " Anne gasped.

"Except I've never believed that story," Tom continued. "It's inconsistent with some of the actions she had Lourdes take as her mole here in Charleston. Not to mention that the Volm have never heard of anything like this happening before, and you'd think they'd know _something_ if it was a familiar tactic for the Espheni. So I've been trying to quietly look into the matter on my own; I didn't want to alarm you until I had something more concrete to say about it."

"She ... Lexie thinks ..." Dr. Glass said haltingly, her voice choked. "And you _kept_ this from me?"

"I wasn't sure whether ... I thought maybe she'd already told you." It was Tom's turn to sound uncertain.

"And you thought that _I_ would keep that from _you_?" Her voice grew harsh with fury. "I guess you were right; I guess we really _can't_ keep a clear head with each other anymore. Because I thought we still at least had _that_ much of an understanding. And how much of this does _he_ already know?"

An honorable man, John thought, would have wandered back to the desk by now and pretended he hadn't heard a thing; good thing he wasn't an honorable man. He didn't actually wish Anne any harm, but he'd be lying if he said he hadn't worried about Tom falling back into her warm, welcoming, and very feminine arms.

But that didn't seem to be happening; rather than trying to placate her with soothing words, Tom said only, "I don't see how that's relevant."

"I thought so," Anne continued, venomously. "You've always been strangely tolerant of him, but these last few weeks, watching him walk next to you, listening to the things people are saying about him — it's been like a slap in the face. _I_ can't meet your needs, but somehow _John Pope_ can? What do you even see in him? Explain _that_ to me, Tom; because I need to understand."

There was a brief, tense silence; John could picture Tom rubbing his hand over his mouth, the way he did when he was thinking things over and not quite sure what to say. "You remember the second time he came to the Second Mass? When you treated the gunshot wound in his leg, and gave him that godawful striped shirt to wear?"

"Yeah, I remember," she snorted. "If you're about to tell me that this is about him saving your kids that day — after everything else he's done, after everything _I've_ done —"

"No, no. Or ... not just that," Tom replied. "You remember any of the other wounds you treated that day? The gash on his forehead, for example; I think he still has a scar from that."

John started, reaching up to touch the crease he'd been left with by Terry Clayton's idea of hospitality. Why was Tom bringing _that_ up?

"What does that have to do with anything?" Anne echoed John's thought.

"You ever wonder how Clayton knew to find us in the first place? Or how he knew it would be worth hitting us up for enough kids to satisfy the Skitters he'd made his deal with?"

Anne gasped, and John dropped his hand, stunned. He'd never told Mason anything about that; he'd figured the full truth would kill any goodwill he'd earned that day. When the hell had the man figured it out?

"You mean we almost lost our kids — and _did_ lose Mike and three other fighters — because _Pope_ told them where to find us?" the doc hissed.

"Because Clayton caught him, and strong-armed it out of him. It was pretty clear from the things I heard them say to each other. But when John had the opportunity to run ... he didn't; he chose to make things right instead. Saved our kids, despite his opinion of us. _That's_ why I've always given him a second chance; because I saw what he was made of when his ego was out of the picture. And after our little impromptu camping trip ... let's just say, he saw what _I'm_ made of when _my_ ego's out of the picture. And apparently, he liked what he saw." He sighed, then added as if it made perfect sense: "I don't have to lie to him, Anne."

"Did I _ever_ ask you to lie to me." Her voice shook; that hadn't calmed her down at all.

Mason chuckled lowly, as if anything about that statement was funny. "I lie to everyone, Anne. Including myself. Every day. Sometimes every _hour_ of every day. And sometimes that's not even enough, and I do it anyway. Because if people think that there's no hope ... They damn well better believe that _I_ think that there is. But Pope ... he's a selfish son of a bitch, and he's pulled me back more than once when I would have taken it too far. He already knows all my fears and doubts. But I don't ... it isn't that he's _better_ than you, Anne. It's just that ..." He trailed off in frustration, finally losing the thread of what he was trying to say.

Anne sniffed, a wet, quietly defeated sound, and finished it for him. "He appreciates the man you've become, the man you think you have to be, now. Not the man you were. The man that _I_ fell in love with."

"Yeah," Tom replied, very quietly, and John swallowed past a sudden lump in his throat. _Now_ he felt self-conscious. What the _fuck_ , Mason.

"You realize that may not be such a good thing," she cautioned Tom.

"Yeah, I know," John would have given a lot to see his face on _that_ one. "But I also know I can't keep doing this job without him. Not anymore."

Anne sighed. "All right. Okay. Just — no more lies about Alexis, please? I can — I can deal with the rest, if I have to. But if you keep anything else about Alexis from me ..."

"I understand. Come by my office tomorrow afternoon?" Tom replied quietly. "I should have more for you by then."

"I'll hold you to that," she said.

The sound of footsteps retreated up the hall ... and then the door opened.

Tom didn't look surprised to see John standing there, waiting. "How much of that did you hear?" he asked, meeting John's gaze for the first time that evening.

Knew all his doubts and fears, huh? John remembered the thoughts he'd had on the subject of vulnerability that very morning, and smiled wryly to himself at the irony. "You knew I was in here, didn't you?" he countered. "That's why you didn't ask her in."

Tom shrugged, still holding himself like he was bracing for impact. "I left the door cracked before I went to the meeting. Couldn't imagine anyone else making themselves at home like that."

John snorted, reluctantly impressed. "You're a real cool customer, Mason. I heard pretty much all of it, I think. Little Man's homework clear through to lying your ass off about not knowing anything, yet."

Tom tucked his hands in his pockets and glanced down, shaking his head. "I never said I didn't know anything. Just that I'd have something to tell her by then."

John tipped his head to one side as he realized something else; this was why Tom hadn't been able to look at him during the meeting. Because he wouldn't have been able to keep John from figuring it out, if he had.

His chest ached, as distracted and unexpected a feeling as everything else Tom had pulled out of him lately. "I get it. You're not ready to tell me, either."

"No," Tom shook his head again, pained lines carved deep around his eyes and across his forehead. "I can't — if I say anything at all — and this, I really should tell her, first."

"Okay." Not at all the conversation he'd thought they'd be having this evening — but, okay. John nodded, then consciously relaxed his posture and gestured to the door. "Then I'll just, uh. There's a wake at the Nest tonight."

"For Zack? I remember. Handyman with a machine gun. One of the few you trusted to watch over me, after Keystone." A tentative smile quirked at the corner of Tom's mouth. "Lift a glass for me, too?"

"You got it," John said, then decided to make something crystal clear. "You know, you're right about me being a selfish son of a bitch. Just because I've started to give a damn about you and your youngest kids — and don't half hate the older two, annoying as they can be — don't mean that's ever going to change. I'm never going to tell you everything'll be all right; and I'm _always_ going to question your decisions."

The faint smile deepened, though the pain in the Professor's eyes deepened with it. "What was it you said to me three weeks ago? If you meant that little speech to be discouraging, you've forgotten who you're talking to, John."

Sometimes he really hated how the things he said came back to bite him so often with this man. Sometimes.

He grabbed Tom by the lapels and pulled him in; so much for moving too quick. And when they broke apart, he gave the other man a sharp nod, his throat tight.

"You know where to find me when you're ready."

This time, when the door shut behind him, he figured he'd pushed just far enough.

-(2/10)-


	3. Shattered

_"Alas! We were lost [ ...]! We shattered ourselves! We left our elder brothers behind! Our younger brothers! Where did they see the sun? Where must they be staying, now that the dawn has come?"_  
— Popul Vuh, Part Four

* * *

Tom stirred in his bed at the sound of the alarm, automatically reaching out to the space next to him. The sheets were cool and smooth beneath his fingertips; it took him a moment to realize that he'd been subconsciously expecting something else, then another long moment to wonder at just what it was that he'd been expecting.

It never ceased to amaze him how quickly the human mind could adjust to new conditions. It had only been three days since he and John had started spending the night in the same bed, and he already felt the other man's absence as a dimming at the start of the day.

He couldn't help but wonder if John had missed his presence, too; and if he still would, after Tom told him about the latest bombshell. He hadn't had it in him to test how deep ' _just because I've started to give a damn_ ' actually went the night before. Tom had a lot more brittle places now than he'd had before the war ... or at least, that he'd been willing to acknowledge, then. The remarkable part was that John hadn't made him feel guilty about his avoidance; just challenged him, the same way he always had, if somewhat less acrimoniously than in the early days. But John had his brittle places, too.

He sat up and scrubbed his hands over his face, then reached for the folded pages he'd left on the bedside table the night before. He was getting ahead of himself again. It might not change anything. And even if it did, wasn't it the height of selfishness to stare at his own navel while humanity was once more facing extinction?

To quote Dan, 'it ain't over 'til it's over'. Time to start the day, and let the chips fall how they would.

* * *

When he wandered into the cafeteria for breakfast sometime later, papers tucked in a pocket, Tom found that the cooks had managed to scrounge up enough eggs for a scramble. It made a nice treat for the morning after the battle. There were even a few shreds of greenery and some unidentified meat mixed in, probably the last of the previous week's hunting and gathering. He savored every bite, thinking of the small ways every last resident of Charleston cultivated hope; he did need reminding, from time to time, that it wasn't his burden alone to bear.

He looked up as another plate joined his on the table, and Marina sat down across from him. It wasn't time for their meeting yet, but he didn't mind; she was becoming a good friend, as well as a capable administrator. She'd been a senator's aide before the war, so she knew the political and legal foundation of the job better than he did, and she'd treated her occasional missteps on the practical front — the time she'd taken the photographs of the Volm grid gun out of his desk and shown them to someone not cleared for sensitive information without considering the potential consequences, for example; or some of the moves she'd supported Hathaway in while Tom and Pope had been in Boston — as learning experiences, rather than trying to pass the buck. He appreciated that about her.

"Letting yourself be seen this morning?" she said, in a lightly teasing tone.

Tom shrugged, and found a smile for her in return. "Followed my nose. Looks like the chicken project's been a success."

"So far so good," she nodded, taking a bite of her own portion with a pleased smile. "Though we were lucky we had enough warning to prepare for the attack; the coop was in the area devastated by the Mega-mechs."

"Even with that warning, though, we still lost all too much. Every life lost, even in exchange for one of their death machines, is one too many." He shook his head, remembering how frustrated he'd felt while the battle was unfolding, penned underground with only fragmented radio reports to keep him informed. If it hadn't been for the fact that he'd known John was right about him being a target, he would have gone up there, regardless.

"Especially when you count the dead as family," she observed, eyes kind. "I heard a glass was lifted in your name at a wake last night, for one of the Berserkers. I hope you didn't spend that time in your office; you need time to rest and recharge and grieve as much as anyone. Perhaps more."

"Perhaps so, but that doesn't change the fact that running this place is a twenty-five hour a day, eight day a week job, even at the best of times," Tom replied — then realized what else she was getting at, and rolled his eyes. "And Pope and I aren't actually joined at the hip. Don't worry, though; I did get some rest. And by rest, I mean sleep."

"I had begun to wonder," she said, the corners of her mouth tucking in briefly. "I hope you know what you're doing, there. I've heard such different accounts of him as ... let's say, puzzle me exceedingly."

Tom snorted at that bit of careful summation. "I almost want to hear you quote that to his face. Pride in good regulation, ha. Though I suspect he'd claim to identify more with the rogue of the piece than the brooding hero."

"The President knows his Pride and Prejudice," Marina tipped her cup to him. "I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that of all men, you would; back in the days when we had the world at our fingertips, there was an Internet saying that a man who knows his Jane Austen always, always wins."

"Rebecca was a fan," he admitted, a bit abashed by the praise. "Comedies of manners; the small-scale interpersonal dramas that define us as human beings every bit as much as the grander movements of nations."

"Perhaps that's why the Espheni have had such trouble predicting us. Didn't you say one of the rebel Skitters described them to you as organic computers? I have a hard time imagining a culture like that ever producing anything as irrational as romantic literature."

"Pity it's not really something we can weaponize against them." Tom spent a brief, brightly amused moment imagining Espheni twitching and collapsing when faced with literary quotations, then put down his fork. "Speaking of plotting against the Espheni — care to adjourn with me? Or ..." He glanced over as he saw Dan Weaver walk into the room from the other side, eyeing the food line with an intrigued expression. "Nevermind, I'm sure Dan will keep you company while you finish your breakfast."

Marina lifted an admonishing eyebrow at him, a faint tinge of color in her cheeks. "We had a few ... differences of opinion while you were out of the city looking for Anne and your daughter, that's all. There's nothing of that nature between the Colonel and I."

"That's not what Jeanne says. And you _were_ the one who just brought up romantic literature." Tom waggled his eyebrows back. Then he relented and got up to clear his plate. "Anyway, take your time."

She scoffed, but he noticed she didn't immediately get up ... and her gaze tracked over to the food line the moment Tom was out of conversational range.

Another example of hope and day-to-day human courage. Perhaps Cochise had been right to remind him of what he'd said the day after Alexis' birth: that the human spirit really was the most powerful thing on the planet.

Tom's fingers drifted to the pocket crinkling with the weight of Dr. Kadar's new report, and he found himself humming the song Jeanne had arranged for the Liberty Tree's christening as he headed for his office.

* * *

He tried to hold onto that cautiously positive mood as the morning unfolded, and mostly managed to succeed — until Anne showed up for the conversation he'd promised her the night before.

She seemed ... less antagonistic than in recent weeks as she entered his office and took a seat on the other side of the desk, a mixed omen for their conversation. He understood that she'd had the right to be angry with him, but he'd had a right to be angry too, and frankly, he hadn't had the emotional resources to clear the air what with everything _else_ on his plate. He'd figured they'd get past it eventually anyway, because she was the conciliating type ... which, of course, was one of the things that had gone wrong in their relationship to begin with.

One of these days, he should probably find a book on self-care for PTSD sufferers. It wasn't as though everyone still alive hadn't collected a whole attic full of issues, and he wanted to be a better role model for his kids.

"Before we start, I'd like to apologize again for waiting to talk to you about this," he began, clearing his throat and knitting his fingers together atop his desk. "In my defense, I can only offer that I thought it might be hard for you to hear the kinds of things I was asking Dr. Kadar to look for, particularly when I didn't yet have any answers."

"What kinds of things?" Anne asked, frowning at him in clear suspicion.

Tom took a deep breath, and began. "First of all, whether or not she really is — genetically — our daughter." He held up a hand to forestall the obvious objection. "Not because I doubted you, or because I had any intention of abandoning her regardless of the answer; but because the Espheni are capable of rewriting biology on a level that frankly terrifies me, and I wanted to be sure they hadn't found a way to change _that_. The good news is, they didn't; she's one hundred percent ours."

Anne clenched her hands tighter together in her lap, but her voice was steady as she replied. "If that was the _first_ question, I hate to ask what the second was," she replied.

He abruptly remembered that Dr. Kadar's results were still tucked in his pocket; he took the sheets of paper out, then carefully unfolded them, smoothing them flat atop the desk. He slid the top three sheets over to Anne — the original DNA test she herself had asked for, followed by the ones to establish paternity and maternity — then stared down at the next set, trying to decide how best to explain them. He still found it difficult to believe what the tests suggested, despite his long-standing suspicions on the subject.

"So did I," he said, seriously. "The question was — whether the alien DNA Dr. Kadar found in her initial tests came from the Espheni, or from some other source entirely."

Anne went several shades paler, staring at him in consternation. "The fact that you phrased it like that tells me that it isn't — but what else would it be? What else _could_ it be?" she objected.

He spread his hands wide. "There's no easy answer to that question. After Cochise stopped by, it was pretty simple for Dr. Kadar to find some transfer DNA to test against the Volm genome. And I recently had a scavenging party go back to retrieve a sample from the last Overlord we killed under the pretext of finding easier ways to destroy them. What's showing up in Lexie's DNA ... it doesn't match either of those sources."

"But the fevers she suffers when she has the growth spurts, the things we've seen in her blood samples ... apart from the heightened rather than lowered temperature, it mimics what we've seen from other Espheni infections in the past," Anne pointed out. "That doesn't make any sense."

"I know, it doesn't," Tom shrugged helplessly. "He did find _some_ Espheni proteins in her blood, particularly in the samples taken right after her last episode. The thing is, though ... he's pretty sure those _are_ from an infection or virus of some kind. Separate from the actual DNA changes, as if it's trying to boost or enhance the alterations. He thinks that's what actually might be responsible for her rapid aging; it puts so much stress on her system, it's not likely to be a naturally occurring feature of the originating organism."

Anne swallowed thickly, as if her mouth had gone dry, then came to the obvious conclusion. "Because Karen wanted to use her as a weapon. And whatever she is — whatever she might become — you can't give a baby orders, or brainwash it into believing whatever warped version of reality best fits your plans."

"Exactly," he nodded, wearily.

"So what's the complicated answer, then," she said, lips pressed into a thin line.

"That's ... still mostly speculative, but I'm pretty sure it has a lot has to do with the answer to my _third_ question," he said, turning over the last page of results. If there'd been any sense of proportion in the world, it would have hit the table with an ominous thud, not a quiet rustle; but reality was seldom so coordinated.

Anne reached across the table, snagging the sheet of paper and drawing it back where she could read it. She scanned it over once, then again, a furrow drawing between her brows. "I'm no expert," she said slowly, "but ... these aren't Alexis' results. They can't be; this DNA sample is male."

"I know," he replied wryly, pulling one of Alexis' sheets free and lining it up next to the one she was staring at. He'd had Dr. Kadar run this particular test three times. "That one is mine."

Anne gaped at him, then looked down again, staring first at the spike of strangeness in her daughter's DNA, then at the less obvious — but no less alien — deviation highlighted at a similar place in Tom's. "But how?"

"You're asking me?" he shrugged again. "All I can tell you is that the only gaps in my memory when this could have been done to me were back on the Espheni ship. Right before that red-eyed Skitter did two unbelievable things: let me, alone of all humans on that ship, go ... and begin a Skitter rebellion on Earth."

Anne shook her head, a tight, side-to-side denial of belief, never taking her eyes off him. "But what does this even mean? If you were the target — does that mean Alexis' _uniqueness_ was just a byproduct? One that Karen just so _happened_ to discover and capitalize on?"

"No ... no, I think what happened with Alexis was absolutely intentional. At least, in principle." That aspect of the problem, in fact, had taken Tom as much effort to come to terms with as all the rest of it. The Espheni harnessed children mostly between the ages of eight and eighteen for a reason; they were big enough to put to useful work, but still contained all the potential and malleability of youth. But the only subjects the rebel Skitter had had available were adults. "I think he was just playing a much longer game than the Espheni. They knew a lot about my ... social connections ... before they ever took me aboard, thanks to Rick's betrayal; and thanks to the eyebug, Red Eye was able to track me back so he could ... and I'm guessing, here ... monitor the success of his experiment. No wonder we were able to get that eyebug out so easily; he'd already found me by then."

If he hadn't gone aboard that ship the day the rest of their group fled the Boston area, Alexis might be normal. Or ... she might not exist at all. Red Eye might have picked another human subject; or might not have chosen anyone, and put off his rebellion a while longer. The Second Mass might have prospered better with Tom at Dan's side the whole way; or it might've been wiped out before they even reached Fitchburg. They might not have found and destroyed the jammer or the fuel plant without the rebel Skitters' help; the Volm might never have found any human allies, or might've been unable to complete their project in time. Everyone on Earth might, even now, be dying under the radiation projected by the Espheni defense grid. Or ... they might have found some other, better way to destroy it. It was impossible to know; impossible not to feel guilty, regardless.

Anne looked horrified; she reached a hand to him automatically. "God. Tom ..."

He clasped it across the desk, giving her a crooked smile. "Nothing we can do about any of it at this point; I was obviously just the carrier for this ... whatever it is. My main concern is what it means for Alexis."

She swallowed, studying him, then looked down at the reports again and let go his hand, brushing her fingers over the ink that represented their daughter's differences. "You've given me answers, but now I have new questions. If the rapid aging really is separate from the genetic changes themselves, can we stop it? Kill the infection and let her grow at a normal rate, without endangering her?"

"Maybe. _Should_ we?" Tom had to ask. _Nothing_ in this world was completely without danger.

"What?" Her eyes widened incredulously. "How can you even ask that? Of course we should; its effects aren't natural, and not only is it hurting her, it's denying her the opportunity to have a normal childhood. Children shouldn't have to grow up so fast; you've said that to me before, about Alexis _and_ Matt."

"But she's also a target, Anne. The Espheni know about her, remember? Sooner or later they'll try to reclaim her. And the older she is, the more developed her talents, the better she can protect herself." Better that she didn't have to, but — there was no kindness left in their world for the defenseless.

Anne stared at him for a long moment; then she gathered up the pages and stood. "That isn't solely your decision to make; any more than it was your right to keep any of this from me in the first place. I'm going to go talk to Roger, confirm what you've said. Then I'm going to think about it. And then I'm going to ask Alexis what _she_ wants to do," she said.

Tom's first instinct was to object. Like the accusation John had leveled at him the day their lives had taken a sudden left turn on the way back from West Virginia: ' _You're so far up your own ass trying to hold it all together that your first response to anything that doesn't fit your plan is to try to control it_ '. Or words to that effect. He liked to think he was a little more self-aware than that ... but this situation _was_ out of his control, and it _did_ bother him, and his track record _was_ a little problematic, viewed from that angle.

"Please ... I know it's hypocritical of me to ask, but keep me in the loop before you do anything?" he conceded, quietly. "I'm not saying no, but I need to be a part of it."

She raised an eyebrow, studying him for a long moment. "That depends," she finally said. "How much of your playing devil's advocate just now was _Pope's_ idea?"

Tom snorted. "None of it; I know what I said last night, but she's _ours_ , Anne. She's your daughter, and mine, and I was a father long before I ever met John Pope. You came first. Besides, if you think I'm all that eager to tell him that not only does _she_ have alien DNA, but apparently I do, too ..." he trailed off into a rough, self-deprecating chuckle. "Well, some bridges I'll just have to blow up as I come to them."

Anne pressed her lips together, then finally relented with a nod. "All right. I believe you. Just ... don't do this again, all right? I need to be able to trust you with our daughter; to know you aren't going to make unilateral decisions without me either, if you really want us to stick around."

"I do. I do, and I promise — I'll do my best," Tom told her.

"We'll see," she said. Then she left, closing the door gently behind her.

Tom wanted to bow his head over the desk; to thrust his fingers through his hair, pour himself a glass of scotch, and throw it at the wall. Then pour himself another and abdicate from the rest of the day's problems. But he'd given up that luxury the day he'd sworn to leave his father's legacy behind him.

He reached for the tentative, hopeful feeling from that morning, remembering the fire in John's eyes the night before, and blew out a breath. Then he got up, collected his rifle, and headed for the nearest stairwell. There were plenty of work parties on the surface that day, and he had some time before the next fixed point on his schedule. Maybe a little fresh air and sunshine would help put things into perspective.

* * *

Evening found him — several hours later — out on the porch of a mostly-restored house just off Liberty Square. The lintels and windowsills had picked up another layer of windblown dust after the attack, but it was otherwise ready for habitation as soon as enough furniture and linens could be found to make it comfortable. Tom had taken a seat at the top of the porch steps, elbows braced on his knees, and watched the flow of the city as the light began to fade from the sky. His cheek itched where he'd rubbed concrete dust on it at some point; his trousers were smeared with grey along the right side from working in the rubble that afternoon; and there was grime worked so deep under his fingernails he'd probably be better off just trimming them to the quick instead of trying to scrub.

But strings of salvaged holiday lights hung from eaves and tent poles once again, and the murmur of laughter and live, raucous music spilled out into the street from the Nest, a block and a half away. A woman walked by, humming and gently patting the back of a baby in her arms; he didn't know her as more than a face occasionally seen in the crowd, but she smiled and nodded respectfully as she passed him, murmuring 'Good evening, Mr. President'. Just one of his five thousand or so constituents, going about her day.

Tom was still following her with his eyes, thinking about human will and perseverance, when the thud of boots on wood alerted him to the presence of another, climbing the steps to join him.

"Heard you were out and about," John said. He had an unlabeled dark brown bottle in each hand, product of the Nest's makeshift microbrewery; he held one out as he took a seat next to Tom.

Tom took it with a nod. He'd figured someone would find him here sooner or later; just as well it was John. "Albert Einstein once said, 'Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance, you must keep moving.' I suppose that seemed like good advice to me, today."

"Einstein, this time," John observed, quirking a wry smile. "Huh, so you do have some variety in your fortune cookie jar; it's not all historians and soldiers. You know he also said, 'two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I am not yet sure about the universe'? Truer words."

"Still not ready to talk about it," Tom warned him with a tight shake of his head, then relented slightly, because he really was pleased to see John: a bright point in his day. "Though I appreciate the beer. And the company."

The brew in the bottle was dark, strong, and a little chocolaty; it must have been maturing in a cool basement somewhere almost since the microbrewery had begun operations. John's gaze matched it, serious and a little opaque as he stared at Tom.

"We dodged a bullet here yesterday," he replied, seemingly apropos of nothing. "A lot of communities probably didn't. Even most of them, if you want to ruin your day any worse thinking about it. I could take a scouting party out; mostly Berserkers, the battle couple, a refugee or two from the area to point us the way. See what kind of range we can get on those drones from the Volm and check out what's going on inside one of those fences."

It took Tom a moment to recognize the out John was leaving him; his eyebrows flew up, torn between amusement and indignance. "I'm not ... getting cold feet, or buyer's remorse, or whatever else you think is going on here. Not that I don't think the scouting trip's a good idea; I planned to propose something very like that tomorrow, after everyone's done enjoying their day of not-quite-rest. I just ..."

He cast his mind back over past conversations, and abruptly remembered one that might ease the way; that last trip to Boston and back had largely resolved into a blur of grief, exhaustion, and numb fury, but certain moments stood out sharply in his memories even now, like glints of sunlight illuminating the surface of a dark, still pond. "You remember the option that worried me most, when I told you I didn't think Karen was responsible for Lexie?"

John's forehead wrinkled; then he rocked back in dismay. "You're talking about the Skitter playing god option? You're shitting me."

"I wish I was," Tom shook his head, ruefully. "Whatever's in Alexis is there because he did it to me first. I'd show you Dr. Kadar's analysis for proof, but Anne has it now — she wanted to confirm it with him." His hand came to the pocket where the pages had been tucked away, then dropped again, empty. "And if it turns out to mean ..." He sighed. "Maybe you _should_ have run me off into the woods, when I first got back."

"You ..." John stared at him for a long moment, speechless. Then he slammed his bottle down on the step next to Tom with a _thunk_ and shot to his feet, striding a few restless paces away, then braced his hands on his hips and gave Tom a dirty look. "So. 'My President is an Alien', huh?" he drawled, turning to stare off down the same street Tom had been watching, taking in the state of the city.

John's back was as tense as a drawn bow beneath his jacket, giving no clue how he felt about that statement. Tom hadn't forgotten how often John had said that the only good alien was a dead alien over the last couple of years, or how persistently he'd claimed that neither the rebel Skitters nor the Volm ultimately had humanity's long-term best interests in mind. But after the wringer he'd already put his emotions through that day ... Tom sighed and took another sip of the excellent beer.

"Yep. Though I'm not sure which is actually the strangest word in that sentence; it all feels ... equally surreal."

John turned sharply to look back over his shoulder at that, profile lit with burnished gold hues in the fading light. Between the scruff, the leather, and the visible arsenal, he looked something like a still from a Mad Max movie: Brooding Apocalyptic Antihero at Sunset.

"The 'President', the 'Alien' ... or the 'My'?" he said, voice curling low and sardonic around the words. Then he grinned, a flash of bared teeth. "Personally? I'm voting for the 'My'."

A shiver went up Tom's spine, and he set his half-empty bottle down next to John's. "I don't blame you for that, since it looks like you might've been right after all. I still _could_ end up posing a threat to everyone."

John's whole face twitched at that; a succession of emotions Tom could only partly read flashed over his features, rage and resignation and something much softer jumbled together with others he couldn't put a name to, and his fists clenched at his sides. Then he _moved_ again, striding back toward the porch as swiftly and suddenly as he'd stepped away, grabbing the front of Tom's shirt and lifting him bodily from the steps with the force of his momentum. Tom stumbled backward, trying to maintain his balance as he was carried off his feet, and felt the shock with his whole body as he was slammed up against the front wall of the house.

"Would you stop with the _testing_ me already?" John hissed, grip tightening in the fabric of Tom's shirt. He vibrated with tension, like he wanted to shake him, but didn't dare start lest he not be able to stop. "Or playing the martyr; I don't care which it is, but I'm getting fucking tired of this, either way. How many more ways do I have to say it? You'll get rid of me when I _want_ to be rid of you, and not one second sooner. If that happens to mean putting a bullet in you to save humanity — well, we'll dive off _that_ cliff when we come to it, but I'm sure as hell not going to torture myself over the _possibility_. I've got better things to do. Get over yourself, Mason."

"That's ... that wasn't what I ..." Tom started to say, then stopped, going still in John's grasp. Because it was, wasn't it? Not intentionally, but another bad habit it was taking a while to unlearn. He swallowed, then gave John a tiny, crooked smile and answered the question, not the insults. How many? "At least one more."

He stopped there before he could fuck things up worse and dug his fingers into the leather of John's jacket, switching to a method of communication a little harder to misunderstand. Tom's lips were chapped and sore from all the time he'd spent outdoors that day; John tasted of beer and something fried that wasn't very savory secondhand. But none of that mattered in the moment: heat washed through him like the snap of a circuit closing, tension bleeding out of his muscles.

John groaned, slanting his mouth over Tom's as his hands relaxed, uncurling out of their tight fists to flatten against Tom's chest. In response, Tom reeled him in closer, until the firm planes of John's body were pressed as close as the weatherworn wood at his back. He hitched his hips automatically, seeking friction; sparks flared behind his eyes at the contact, and he slid his hands down to John's flanks, tugging the hem of his shirt free to run his hands over the warm skin beneath. The fingerless gloves he'd put on to protect his palms while he worked hampered the contact he really wanted, but he was too impatient to strip them off first; and from the shudder John gave under the rasping touch of the stiff fabric, he didn't seem to mind.

John came up for air a moment later, pupils blown wide in the sinking light of dusk. " _Jesus_ , Mason," he said with a hoarse chuckle. "Was it the ultimatum or the manhandling that turned your crank? 'Cause either way, I'm down with _that_."

Tom smirked, then took a page out of John's book and came at the subject from another angle. "I missed you this morning, you know. Still think it's a little quick to be playing house?"

"You're unbelievable," John scoffed, then leaned back in, gaze dropping to Tom's mouth as they shifted together.

"Hey," a voice shouted from the street, breaking the moment; pressed neck to knee against John, Tom couldn't quite see who it was. "Get a room, assholes!"

John pulled just far enough away to throw a middle finger in the speaker's direction, not even bothering to look. "That's get a room, Mister President!" he called, in loud, offended tones, then chuckled lowly at the mumbled curse and hurried footsteps that followed. The sound vibrated through his chest and into Tom's like the bubbles in champagne, and reminded Tom suddenly, vividly, of his college days, when everything was still possibility.

"...So. I don't suppose they've furnished this place since the last housing inventory?" John added more quietly, eyes glinting with humor.

Tom snorted, amusement and affection cooling his still-raw emotions like soothing rain. "I'm afraid not."

"Damn. Well, if I'm going to take one for humanity and try my hand — so to speak — at alien cock, I'm sure as hell not going to do it on my knees," John continued, eyebrows waggling suggestively. "So how's about we head to my place and reconvene this in a more _congenial_ setting?"

Tom had spent the first night of his return from the Espheni ship on the Second Massachusetts' med bus, more than a year ago, reliving the parts of the long trek back he could remember in fevered dreams. Since their arrival in Charleston and its replacement with a full-sized infirmary, Pope had converted the old Greyhound to a mobile living space rather than setting up a more permanent residence in one of the houses. It seemed oddly appropriate to close the circle in the same place, exorcizing the last of the fallout of that misadventure.

"You pretty much had me at 'quid pro quo'," he murmured back — referencing the night John had talked him out of resigning the Presidency, but absolutely intending the implied double entendre.

John's teeth flashed in a smug grin; then he chuckled darkly and took a fistful of Tom's shirt once more. "Promises, promises," he said, echoing Tom's words from the morning before; then he stepped back, pulling Tom with him, towing him toward the post-apocalyptic luxuries of Popetown.

At least he'd got _one_ thing right that day. Tom leaned down to snag the necks of the beer bottles as they passed them by, feeling hope — that thing with feathers — once more stirring in his soul.

* * *

He'd thought he'd been concealing his fit of melancholy pretty well, but John apparently wasn't the only one who'd been reading him like cheap newsprint.

"So," Dan grunted at him the next morning, as they leaned over a map marking a route north and east along the route of the old I-26. They'd sent the tiny Volm drones as far as Columbia, snooping around for evidence of other survivors, and found only a ghost town intermittently patrolled by Skitters; the planned scouting party would have to go either west on I-20 from there to Atlanta, or north on I-77 to Charlotte, their best guesses for the nearest cities still populated enough to attract the attention of the Espheni. "You seem steadier, today. Feelin' a little less like you've been staked out for the vultures?"

Tom looked up, throwing his friend a sheepish look. "Was it that obvious?"

"You get that look in your eye when you're missin' the days when all you were responsible for were the lives of the Second Mass and the deaths of the next bunch of Skitters to cross our path. I know, 'cause Jeanne tells me I get the same way sometimes," Dan commiserated. "But it was gettin' to the point this time where I wondered if we should've asked Hathaway to stay, for your sake if not for Charleston's."

Tom made a face. "Definitely not Charleston's; I don't think he knew quite what to do with us, half the time. Or our allies; his administration's still on a fairly reactionary footing. Have we heard from his people again, yet?"

"No; and I'm thinkin' we might not, given that they were headed for the Richmond area last we talked," Dan replied gravely, tapping a finger over a section of the map where they'd previously marked evidence of survivors. The perfect target for another enclosing force.

"Damn. Better send Pope north, then; see if he can pick up any traces while he's out. Could just be the radios; I noticed we were having a little trouble with them, yesterday."

"Like the early days of the resistance all over again. Like the Espheni found some kinda replacement fuel source," Dan nodded.

"Yeah," Tom grunted. "Might want to have one of our engineers take a look at the downed Beamers across the river, see if they can tell what they're using now. Might help us with the fences, too. Whatever that green energy is, electricity is electricity, and physics is physics; there has to be a way to defuse it or short it out."

"You sure about sending the Berserkers on this mission, though? They're not exactly the stealthiest bunch." Dan's tone was casual and unworried — but he didn't look at Tom as he asked it, and Tom suppressed a sigh.

"Who else do you suggest I send?" he replied, carefully matching Dan's calm, factual approach. "I'm not sending you on back to back patrols. Everyone keeps harping on _me_ to rest, but you need it too, you know; you're mission essential around here. Hal's still a little young for fighters not already familiar with him to follow without question. And I need Anthony to go over our internal security in case the Espheni try the infiltration route again. I'd honestly prefer to take him off military operations altogether and ask him to start building a police force — John's policies have done a lot to defuse destructive impulses in the city, and we've been firm on discipline among the fighters, but with over five thousand people living in a pressure cooker environment we're just asking for trouble without one — but I know he's not ready to give up being on the front lines, just yet. That leaves Pope as the best option with the experience and the flexibility to see it through. Can't send him without the Berserkers — and they'll want feel like they're doing something anyway, after what happened to Zack. John'll make sure they get the job done."

"You're not afraid he'll go off half-cocked, somewhere in the field?" Dan raised craggy eyebrows. "It's gonna be weeks, at a minimum, before they get back — _if_ they get back."

"Not particularly. I'll send a Volm communicator with him, and Hal and Maggie will be with the group as well. You know neither of them's inclined to cut him any slack," Tom offered.

Dan's eyes narrowed further as he considered that statement. "That your idea or his?"

"He wants to go play; and to do that, he's willing to play along," Tom shrugged. "Does it matter?"

"It _matters_ when I can't figure out his motivations," Dan admitted. "I got used to him being an asshole, but a useful one; he's _still_ an asshole, but then I see him with his daughter, or I see _you_ walk in here like a huge weight's been lifted off your shoulders, and it makes me wonder. You gonna be alright letting him go off without you just now? I'd half-expected you to try to talk me into letting _you_ go on the mission, too."

Tom blinked as his understanding of Dan's objections shifted, then chuckled. "You remember what it was like when Porter first assigned us together? How we fought like cats and dogs because we didn't always understand, or agree with, where the other was coming from? But we usually worked it out in the best interests of the Second Mass."

Dan nodded, cautiously. "Thought Jim had lost his mind at first. But it turned out he'd picked better than he knew." He didn't add, _what's that got to do with the price of eggs?_ , but Tom heard it nonetheless.

"You know how much I value the friendship we have now, Dan. Knowing you — I finally understand a little of what it must be like for my sons to have each other." He had to clear his throat before continuing, carefully ignoring Dan's reaction to the words. "But our jobs have changed significantly, both in role and scale, since we found Charleston. And that push and pull we had when I was your XO, that kick in the ass you said you sometimes needed — I get that from him. Not that I don't still value your input, far from it. But I know my own stubbornness well enough to know that I occasionally need it delivered with a certain ruthless efficiency, and I would never ask that of you. The more _personal_ benefits have been an unexpected bonus."

Dan's gaze went briefly distant; then he nodded, rubbing a hand over his chin. "I get you," he said slowly. "And no need to hold my hand; I get that too, actually. Something I didn't realize 'til you were gone, those months after Karen took you the first time. The way you reacted when I was at my worst? The anger, the drugs I was using to keep myself goin' back then? A man don't defuse that as carefully as you did if he don't have some experience doin' that kind of thing."

"Dan ..." Tom hadn't realized Dan had noticed that; hadn't even thought about it himself at the time, just acted.

"No need to say anything more," Dan cut him off gruffly, clasping his shoulder. "I'm grateful every day that you stuck with me through all that; you didn't have to. Maybe I've gone a little in the other direction since; maybe you do need someone less ... sentimental ... givin' you advice. Someone who gets the whys and the wherefores without you havin' to spell it out. Just so long as you don't take everything _he_ says for gospel, either."

"You don't have to worry about that, Dan," Tom replied warmly, returning the gesture.

"Yes, well," Dan replied, clearing his throat. "I think that's all my objections dealt with then; time to call the others in and brief 'em."

* * *

It didn't take long to lay it all out for the team. Only one major change was made to the plan; Hal tapped the map just south and east of Richmond, frowning thoughtfully at the dot marked 'Norfolk'.

"I know it's a little out of our way. And it might be a long shot," he said, earnestly. "But there was that big naval station there. And the Espheni didn't target port facilities for bombing the way they did army and air force bases, right? The people would have been rounded up, and probably the guns and ammo, too — but there might still be some vehicles we could use. Like, the big tracked kind."

"Whoa, whoa; I think I see where you're goin' with this," Dan said, eyes lighting up.

"Uh huh," Hal nodded, grinning. "I got to talking to one of the engineers at dinner last night, and he said something like that might be our best option for getting the BFG mobile. General Bressler's people checked the base here in Charleston a couple years ago, but most of its assets were deployed in the initial invasion. Naval Station Norfolk was the biggest in the country, though; there _has_ to still be something there we can use."

"I like the way you think, kid," John said, arms crossed as he stared down at the map. "Be a bit of a trek, but if we're already in the area looking for the politician formerly known as the President, I suppose it couldn't hurt to take a look."

"I'm so glad you approve, Pope," Hal said, very dryly, then looked up at Tom. "Dad, what do you think?"

Tom gave the nineteen-year-old his best unimpressed look. "I think since _Pope_ is going to be the one leading this scout, it's a good thing you're already on the same page," he replied, matching his son for sarcasm. "That said — this is already a risky mission. We have no idea what you'll find out there. The drones will help; but even Volm technology can't spot everything."

He switched his attention to John, locking eyes with him as he continued. "The primary goal for this mission is to observe an intact fence and determine what we'll have to do to take it down, but it'll also be important to establish conditions on the ground along the way. I'd prefer not to just trust the word of the Volm scouts for that. I'll send both a radio and a communicator with you, and we'll reassess along the way whether it's feasible to extend the trip northward or if it will have to be delayed. Fair enough?"

"Fair enough." John nodded to him, then raised a pointed eyebrow at Hal.

Hal glanced at his dad again, his expression slightly incredulous — then winced and shut his mouth as Maggie pinched his thigh with vicious fingers.

Maggie met Tom's gaze next, half-challenging and half-amused; Tom shared a commiserating smile with her, then turned the briefing slash family squabble back over to Dan.

They might have been knocked back to the early days again, but they _could_ do this. One step at a time.

* * *

The duffel bag made its appearance in his rooms again that night — but disappeared again almost as quickly, kicked under a table after its contents were emptied into one of the dresser's empty drawers. There was no further discussion of anyone's feelings, but Tom heard the echo of John's promise nonetheless: _how many ways do I have to say it?_ That night, he slept deeply, without the usual disruption of vaguely disquieting dreams.

The next morning, he slapped his son heartily on the back in lieu of a hug, slipped a half-bar of Hershey's that he'd been saving into John's saddlebags, and shook hands with the others; Lyle made a decent attempt to crush his fingers, but he was smirking while he did it, and the rest followed Tector in wolf-whistling at John's farewell kiss.

It felt — different, being the partner left at home rather than the one leaving someone behind. But settled too, in some way he couldn't quite define. Tom ate breakfast with Matt and Ben, touching base with his younger sons and filling them in on what Hal was up to, then went on to the next committee meeting with only half his mind still wishing he'd been able to go along. And when Cochise called only a few hours later, triggering the Volm communicator he'd given Tom to carry, he was grateful for the clearer head.

"I am relieved to hear that you have successfully repelled the attack, Professor," Cochise's voice issued from the device. "From what we have seen, and learned from the other Volm scout teams, others were ... not so lucky."

"How many others?" Tom asked him.

"Most. Perhaps all," Cochise replied, mournfully. "Human settlements are being fenced in by impenetrable green energy barriers on a worldwide scale, each accompanied by a single Espheni troopship to monitor and control those trapped within. And in each case we have observed, the area was blasted into rubble by superior terrain droids first, apparently to eliminate any existing food stores or prepared shelter. Once that was done, Skitters were sent in to remove any remaining weaponry ... as well as any children of an age to be harnessed."

Tom blanched, imagining what might've happened to Charleston if they hadn't been prepared, and had to put his head down between his knees for a moment to stave off a wave of nausea. "If that had happened here ... we owe you big, Cochise. Thank you."

"It was the least I could do," Cochise replied, lowering his voice; probably so the rest of his squad couldn't hear. "There has as yet been no sign what the Espheni plan for the remainder of those in the camps. I will send any refugees we encounter your way, and contact you again when I have more news."

"Likewise," Tom replied. "We sent a scout group out to take a closer look; I'll let you know if we find any more pieces to the puzzle. Keep the faith, my friend."

"Keep the faith," Cochise echoed back awkwardly, then cut the connection.

* * *

Tom informed most of his staff of the news, but after some discussion with Marina decided not to spread it to the whole of Charleston just yet. Virtually everyone in the city still had loved ones somewhere in the world whose fate they didn't know; if not immediate family, then cousins or grandparents or college roommates they'd all told themselves were surely holed up somewhere, safe and sound and waiting to be found when the war was over. The knowledge that most remaining survivors were being collected into prison camps ... well, until the scout team returned to hang a human face on the news and hopefully also bring back a major piece for their next counteroffensive, it would just stir up more doubts and unrest and encourage more negativity toward the Volm.

Tom wasn't feeling very optimistic about Cochise's people in general these days, either. But he had a feeling they would still need their assistance before the end. And even if they didn't ... any successful picture of life after the war would still include contact with alien species; there would be no putting that genie back in the bottle. And there was no arguing with the fact that they were not starting that relationship from a position of strength. That worried him.

Last on the list was the infirmary: Anne. Any refugees Cochise — or John and his team — sent back to Charleston would undoubtedly be in need of their services, for a checkup if not more serious medical problems. In the last few years, many deprivation-related disorders that had been virtually eliminated in America had claimed a lot of lives, and that was even before getting into the deaths from diseases and complicated wounds and other medical issues that would have been survivable in a pre-war hospital. Anne took every such death personally.

He arrived to find Anne in a meeting already with Dr. Kadar, though; they were having an animated, low-voiced conversation at the back of the infirmary, one that looked like it might go on for a while. She was very intent, and he was talking with his hands and expression as much as with his words, the way that seemed to come naturally to him when he forgot to zealously guard himself against others. And the reason was fairly obvious: on one of the gurneys near the front of the room, Alexis lay curled with her dark head in Matt's lap, eyes dull with the onset of fever.

Both his youngest children were listening intently to Tanya Pope, wearing nurse-apprentice's scrubs, who was reading to them from a much-battered paperback with a rabbit on the cover. Matt's ever-present rifle had been propped against the bed within reach of his hand, but his fingers were currently tangled in his sister's hair, smoothing it away from her slightly sweaty forehead.

Tom's heart caught in his throat at the sight, and he automatically came to a halt, half-hoping that they hadn't noticed him come in so he could soak up the moment for a little longer.

"'You'd better wait here,' he said," Tanya read. Her soprano voice was rich with emotion; she was clearly a natural storyteller, the way the other two hung on her every word. "'When I get to the bend, I'll stamp. But if I run into trouble, get the others away.' Without waiting for an answer, he ran into the open and down the path ... Oh! Mr. Mason!" The book slipped closed in Tanya's hands as she looked up, catching him standing there.

If it had been possible to snap to attention while reclining on a mattress, Matt would have done so; the instant smile he aimed at his dad was one Tom knew very, very well from watching his brothers alternately cover for and or blame each other for every childhood slight and adventure. His heart squeezed again to see it in this context.

"Tanya was just reading to us a little, while Mom's talking to Dr. Kadar!" he blurted. "I know you said I wasn't supposed to read Watership Down on my own, but I'm not a little kid anymore, and when I saw Tanya had a copy, and Lexie said she'd never even heard of it ..."

Tanya's earnest expression was even better than Matt's, though there was a little of her father's chin-up defiance in it as well. "It's one of the last things I remember Dad reading to me, before he went to jail. It's one of the only things I have from before, too, so I read it a lot. Lexie said she doesn't read novels much, but I told her it's an allegory about escaping a destroyed home and finding a place to start over, and she said she'd like to try it ..."

Privately, Tom thought they were probably all still a little young for that book; or would have been, before the war. It wasn't by any stretch of the imagination a children's novel, despite the fact that the protagonists were all rabbits. But it was very Pope, to have given his young daughter a book all about surviving hardships after escaping utter destruction without caring whether it was entirely appropriate — and there was nothing in it that would cast much of a shadow in the world these kids were already surviving, every day.

He held up a hand, smiling warmly at them. "No need to explain it to me; it's a good book. Ben was about your age, Tanya, when I read it to him — and Matt snuck in to listen to parts of it. You enjoying it, Lexie?"

His daughter nodded, a slight movement against Matt's stomach, and one corner of her mouth twitched up. "Fiver's interesting," she said.

"Maybe I'll pop back by later and take a turn reading with you this afternoon — since it looks like we won't be doing our regular lesson today. Having another growth spurt, sweetheart?"

She nodded again, but Matt was the one who answered, cheerful and already so protective. "Yeah. I told her she'd better stop before she gets taller than me — I've been enjoying not being the littlest, and I'm not ready for her to pass me up just yet!"

"It's not like I _want_ to," she replied fretfully; but the smile she aimed up at her brother was affectionate. "Mom says she thinks maybe she can stop it, but not 'til after I'm done growing this time. Sorry, Matt."

"Is that true, Dad?" Matt turned expectant eyes on him.

"Maybe," Tom said, then cast around for a stool and pulled it up next to the bed, on the opposite side from Tanya. He propped his gun next to Matt's, then settled in for a longer explanation. "I don't know if you remember how sick Colonel Weaver was before we got to Charleston — while we were staying at that abandoned hospital?"

"Right before I almost got eaten by those creepy bug things that killed Jamil?" Matt wrinkled his nose. "I mostly remember Hal and Ben and Maggie all freaking out about Karen. And the bug things, of course. Your dad totally almost shot me when he heard me moving around in the vents; I think it scared him as much as it scared me," he added in an aside to Tanya. "But yeah, I know he got bit by one of the harnesses when you guys came to rescue me and Jeanne and Diego from the harnessing facility, and it put him in a coma or something. He snapped out of it pretty quick, though."

"Yeah," Tom nodded. "Anne hooked him up to a machine that took his blood out of his body, killed the infection, and put it back in. Sounds scary, I know, but it worked. And we have even better equipment here. If she thinks she can help you with something similar, Lexie, your Mom's a very smart woman. I believe her."

Both of his children looked reassured to hear that; and he didn't miss the fact that Tanya looked relieved and intrigued in equal parts, as well. He resolved to find some of the less controversial stories of John's time with the Second Mass to give her, later on; things she could tease her father about when he got back.

"Anyway, I know I interrupted your reading — and it's been a long time since I heard the story, myself. If you wanted to get back to it while I wait for Dr. Glass ...?" he nodded to Tanya.

"What about it guys, you want more of the story?" she grinned at Matt and Lexie.

"Yes, please," Alexis replied, politely, and Matt settled back as well, adopting an aloof expression. "Well, I don't know, I guess I could stand to hear a little more."

Tanya smiled at them both, then Tom, then opened the paperback again to the page where she'd left off and cleared her throat.

"Without waiting for an answer, he ran into the open and down the path. A few seconds brought him to the old oak. He paused a moment, staring about him, and then ran onto the bend. Beyond, the path was the same — empty in the darkening moonlight and leading gently downhill ..."

A touch to Tom's shoulder drew him back out of the spell Tanya was weaving with her words, and he looked up, startled, into the apprehensive face of his ex.

"Tom?" Anne prompted him, lowly. "Is something wrong?"

"What ... oh!" He got up, retrieving his rifle and waving the kids to continue, then guided Anne a short distance away where they could still watch but not be overheard. "No; at least, not urgently. Cochise called, and I just wanted to let you know we might be getting a new wave of refugees soon — we weren't the only community to be attacked this week."

"I was afraid of that," Anne sighed, crossing her arms over her chest. "Well, we'll do our best — though if you could mention blood donation at the next community meeting, that would help. Our reserves are getting pretty low."

"Of course," Tom nodded. "No problem." One of the benefits in being in a place with a continuous power supply — they could afford a small amount of constant refrigeration. It was amazing how luxuries got redefined, in a situation like this. "Is that something that would help Alexis?"

Anne frowned. "No — well, maybe; if we use a hemofiltration machine, it'll recycle her own blood, but it'll also strip out everything but the red blood cells and replacement fluids. Once you start talking about significant blood volume, she'll need other blood products added back in, and I don't know how much it'll take to destabilize the infection since it's not identical to the pathogen Dan was dealing with. But if it does work ..."

"Sorry. Most of that's going over my head. But if it means you think I should donate, then I will," he promised.

Anne's expression softened. "Yesterday you seemed to think that she would be safer if we let her suffer."

Tom winced. "Every day I tell myself, 'bullets before food before fuel before entertainment'. We have to survive before we can live. But ..." He gestured helplessly toward the bed. "Seeing them like this ... we've already missed so many moments with her. And not just us; it's cheating her and her brothers, too. And ultimately, it's our job to protect them, not theirs to make things easier on us."

He blinked moisture out of his eyes, then cleared his throat. "So ... I'll support whatever decision you make."

"Thank you," Anne said softly, then reached out to squeeze his hand, a quick commiserating clasp. "Dr. Sumner, Roger and I have been discussing possibilities, and we have one that we think will work without significantly endangering her. I don't want to risk it while her system's already stressed from a forced growth cycle, but as soon as she's stable again, I'd like to try it."

"All right." He nodded. "Keep me posted. And tell her I'll be back down later? I promised I'd read with her some more, after John and Hal check in."

"I will," she promised, then shooed him out of the infirmary with a renewed smile.

-(3/10)-


	4. Out For a Walk

_"This is how they died: when there was just one person out walking, or just two were out walking, it wasn't obvious when they took them away."_  
— Popul Vuh, Part Four

* * *

John had always felt a little on edge in the city; sure, he preferred modern amenities to camping in the rough, especially with supplies of things like Bics and toilet paper running low, but the press of boring people and lack of clear enemies to fight always left him restless and tangled up in other people's petty bullshit. On the road, hunting Skitters and fishheads — for the last couple years, that had been the absolute best place for him to be.

But the space at his side felt unexpectedly empty, three days down the road from Charleston. And it wasn't just that Tom wasn't there with him — which might not be that bad an idea while he was still processing the latest bombshell the Professor had dropped on him. It was that _Mason_ wasn't there, strange as that thought felt. He hadn't realized just how much of his time and energy he'd spent fixated on the guy even before he'd admitted there was anything about him to admire. Baiting Hal and Maggie to cheer himself up just wasn't the same.

And that was even without taking into account _other_ people's reactions to his private business. "I can _feel_ you watching me, Tector," he drawled, shooting a glance to his left. "You got something to say?"

"Sorry. Don't mean to stare," the Berserkers' sniper replied, though he didn't sound sorry at all. "It's just ... we-all get that you and Mason had this big bonding experience, between the plane crash and the torture and everything else last month. Dramatic life-saving adventures and all that. A little weird that it's _you_ , but hooking up after shit like that ain't all that unusual, if you believe the movies," He grinned back over his shoulder at the rest of the group, waggling his eyebrows. "But I just didn't expect the rest of it, I guess."

"The hell do you mean by _that_?" John narrowed his eyes suspiciously.

"Oh, you know. Starin' off into the distance like you were doin' just now. Stakin' your claim before we set out. Talkin' about him all the damn time. I mighta suspected _Mason_ of being a romantic at heart, but _John Pope_?" He clucked his tongue, still smirking. "Not hardly."

There'd been some debate before setting out on this trip whether to use horses or vehicles; ultimately, John had decided that the fact that the Espheni might have the resources to home in on engine heat again was a bigger threat than the length of time it took to get anywhere in a saddle. One factor he hadn't thought of, that might have tipped the scales the other way: the slower pace and lack of separation meant he could be fending off comments like this for potentially _weeks_ before they got back to Charleston.

"What you know about romance could probably fit in a thimble, Tec," John said quellingly, rolling his eyes. "Maybe I'm just worried Mason's going to do something stupid and noble while I'm not there to pull his ass out of the fire. Go off with an Espheni again, or face down a coup, or who the hell knows what. Man's a trouble magnet, always has been, but he's got a lot more riding on his shoulders these days than just the Second Mass."

"Hate to burst your bubble, Pope, but I'm pretty sure worrying about your partner's covered somewhere under the definition of 'romance'," Maggie spoke up, looking more amused than she had any right to be.

"Ugh. 'Partner' is bad enough, but I'd prefer you didn't mention my dad's ass ever again," Hal drawled, riding at her side. "I really don't need that mental image. Walking in on you two last week was scarring enough."

Lyle's guffaw was just the icing on a particularly irksome cake; John cast his closest friend a scathing look before falling back to talk to the locals they'd folded in for this scout instead. One of the pair, a dainty-looking dark-haired chick with no sense of humor and a dead eye with a rifle, had been an accountant in Columbia; she'd helped them mark an anonymous-looking warehouse still half-full of dry goods for a follow-up salvage team that morning, and had had an idea where they might find shelter that night. That had meant taking the 321 north rather than the wider I-77; but given all the givens, that hadn't seemed like the worst idea.

"So — that organic farm you said was up this way. We talking grass-fed beef and free-range eggs, or mostly greenstuff?" he asked the woman: Isabel, who preferred to be called Bell, no second 'e', and had been known to punch first and ask questions later when addressed as Bella. "I only ask, 'cause any animals that might've been there are probably long gone down a Skitter gullet, but if the folks that ran it were the canning type ..."

"Beef and lamb — at least, according to their sales records," Bell confirmed. "But I visited there once or twice; they had a big kitchen garden, and I think they kept a supply of diesel. Might even be medical supplies; the owner wasn't young, and his wife had had a hip replacement. Their kids still helped out, but they lived in Columbia."

Which meant — ninety percent odds the kids had died in the initial bombardment; worse odds than that of the owners surviving the couple of years since without any medical treatment. "The place well-known?"

"Not really," she shook her head. "Other locals that dealt with them directly might've known, but they mostly kept to themselves from what I remember, and they didn't participate in the local farmer's markets or anything."

"Makes a man wonder how many places like this are still out there," Tector mused aloud, dropping back to join them, "just waiting for the scavengers to come through — and how many of 'em will never be found at all. Gotta figure there's what, a hundredth, maybe even less of the original population still alive; a few centuries from now, archaeologists are gonna find all kinds of strange shit just abandoned all across the country."

"Provided they're there to find anything at all," John reminded him, dryly. "Mason might not know the meaning of the word 'quit', but if he ever does run out of luck, ten to one he'll take us all with him. And then it's all over but the crying. The only way the caveman wins the contest between the caveman and the astronaut is if the astronaut doesn't have any weapons. And the Espheni just picked theirs back up."

"You're a joy and an inspiration to us all, Boss. But just so you know, that makes less than five minutes since the last time you mentioned Mason," Lyle cut into the conversation, grinning.

John snarled, prepared to tell the man just where he could stick his commentary — but the woman at his side perked up just then, pointing to a sign up ahead. "That's the turn; a mile and a half up ahead."

"Great. Lyle, why don't you take point? Since you're so eager to exercise your observational skills. And take Tector with you." There'd been no Skitter sign since the outskirts of Columbia, but that was no excuse for sloughing off, and it would get them both out of his hair. "We'll hang back at the turn-off for your signal. Don't dawdle; we only got an hour or so before the sun goes down, and I'd rather not still be out at dusk when the Beamer patrols start to pick back up."

Lyle grumbled, but Tector gave a good-natured chuckle, nudging his horse into a trot. "Will do, Boss."

The rest of them followed at their usual unhurried but sustainable pace, then dismounted in the verge at the junction to stretch their legs and take a closer look at the road surface for signs of recent passage. They'd check in and do another sensor survey of the area when they were settled for the night; no matter how empty the landscape seemed, he'd rather not be distracted in an indefensible position.

Maybe fifteen minutes passed there before John checked the position of the sun again, swiftly sinking in the sky, and turned back to the accountant. "How far past this turn was the farm, again?" he asked, frowning.

"Not far. Half a mile, maybe?" she shrugged. "Two story white house, garage, huge barn just past them, and fields all around; there's no way they could have missed it."

"Probably still checking all the buildings," Hal commented. "Half a mile at a trot, is what, five minutes or so to get there? Yeah, five minutes there, five back, and close enough we would've heard it if one of 'em fired a gun. They gotta still be looking. Which probably means there _is_ something to find."

"Mmm, green beans for dinner tonight. Or corn — or eggplant — or cherry tomatoes," Maggie observed hopefully, rubbing her hands together. "I really never thought I would miss fresh vegetables this much."

"Or pickles," Nico mused, expression distant and faintly rapturous. "I'd trade my last treat-size bag of M'n'M's for a jar of kosher dill pickles. Mmm, mmm, mmm."

"Or black-eyed peas — we _are_ in the South, you know. Lima beans. I'd even take a jar of goddamn Brussels sprouts," Ox said, smacking his lips. "Anything but oatmeal, mystery meat, and pears in syrup. Those omelets just before we left were a real treat. There any truth to the rumors the President's started collecting a herd of cattle in a park somewhere, too? I'd just about _kill_ for a hamburger."

"You're asking _me_?" John laughed, then jerked his chin at Hal. "Junior'd be a better target for that kind of question, don't you think?"

"Oh, I don't know about that," Hal replied with sour laugh. "I think if you look back, you'll find you've been in the loop about as much as I have for a while now — at least, since he found us after Fitchburg. Not that I could tell why, half the time. Or, well — I guess I do _now_." He made a face.

"Not everything's about that — though I know it might seem that way at your age," John smirked. "Hell, maybe I should be reassured he valued me for my mind, first. That's certainly been a new one on me."

"Or maybe he just lost _his_ mind," Maggie snarked. "I know which option I'd place _my_ bet on."

Bell stirred, looking back up the narrow, two-lane blacktop that led toward the farm, and eyed the position of the sun again. "They really _should_ have been back by now, though," she interrupted. "The place isn't all _that_ big, and you told them not to dawdle."

"Well, shit. Three days out, and we're already down two guys." John sighed, then whistled to make sure he had everyone's attention. "All right; mount up. We'll dismount just out of sight and storm the place. And if we find 'em in the pantry with their hands in a jar, I swear to God, they'll be on permanent latrine duty."

Honestly, he'd prefer that to any of the likelier options. Anyone that careless in the Second Mass had earned their Darwin award a long damn time ago. But he wouldn't bury 'em before he'd seen the proof.

The first sign they came across was a single horse, cropping the grass at an unhurried pace; it had been tethered off the road a short way back from the farm, sort of shielded from the property by a rusty truck that had been driven into the ditch, saddle scabbard empty and saddlebags long gone. But there was no blood, and no bodies; just Lyle's big placid beast, waiting patiently for its rider. There was no recent Skitter sign, and no hum or stomp of mech feet; the ground wasn't significantly disturbed, and the buildings, viewed from that distance, seemed intact. But Tector's horse wasn't there. And neither were Lyle or Tector.

Except ... John held up a hand to halt the others and squatted down to take a closer look at the ground, then eye the buildings again. The house wasn't only intact, there were signs of _grooming_ around the place. The lawn out front was uniformly short — which, what the hell was the point of cutting your grass in the apocalypse — and there were definite paths through the leaf litter. The shiny bicycle propped up by the lean-to style garage was kind of a clue, too. But the hanging plants were crusty, and most of the windows were dirty; that made him sort of doubt the original residents had stuck around. They tended to have a bit more pride of place.

Someone had been _living_ there; someone human. And given the lack of gunfire, someone clever, too. Someone that had probably bugged out before they'd even got close. But better to play it safe; they could've just moved one of the horses out of sight and planned to leave after dark, left the other to sow confusion.

"Looks like someone's been eating the porridge," he said, voice low and quiet. Then he gestured toward the house. "Hal and Ox, take the back; Nico, Dixon, with me. We'll be going in the front door. Maggie, Bell, check the garage. Jesse, Nate, hold back; watch the horses and the barn just in case."

No one asked any stupid questions, just nodded and moved smoothly and quietly as told, keeping behind cover or under line of sight from the windows wherever possible. Even the temporary members of John's band weren't half bad, though he'd have traded them for Zack and Crazy Lee in a heartbeat. When everyone was in place, he set an ear to the front door, listening; then he stepped back and signaled for entry.

About a minute later, seven Berserkers converged in the kitchen ... only to find no pressing target despite the flickering light of a lamp on the kitchen table. Just two slumped bodies, lit by the low-burning flame. At first glance Lyle and Tector looked dead, pitched over in their seats; John's lip pulled back in a snarl, and a knot of rage threatened to choke him. But then the ropes registered, and the half-empty beer bottles, and he heard the slight whistling undertone that Lyle's breathing picked up during allergy season. It had driven John up a wall too many evenings to mistake; relief washed through him, and he gestured Nico over to them with a jerk of his chin.

The room had obviously been the focal point for whoever had been living there; the half-open door of the pantry showed only a few jars left on expansive shelving, and several open cupboards had obviously been ransacked. There were dishes stacked on every flat surface, and he'd seen the blankets on the living room couch on his way through; there was even a half-full bucket of water by the sink. But whoever had been using it was long gone. Probably a woman; a reasonably attractive person on her own with a little guile and a smooth delivery could sucker a lot of guys into trusting her, or at least discounting her as a threat. And to take both Lyle and Tector down without a struggle? The carrot must have been a damn sight more appealing than the stick.

"Out pretty cold, but they seem OK," Nico pronounced. He reached over to the lamp and turned up the wick without making John ask, shedding a little more light on the subject.

"Drugged, I'd bet," Maggie added, pursing her mouth as she stooped to pick up a prescription bottle that had fallen to the floor beneath the cupboards. "Depending on what they were given, they might wake up in ten minutes — or ten hours. No way to tell."

"But they're not gonna die, right?" Hal asked, looking grim; he and Tector had struck up something of a friendship while both had been running errands for Weaver, if John remembered right.

Maggie gave them both a critical look, then nodded. "Their color's all right, and they're breathing just fine. Though I wouldn't doubt they'll both have pretty nasty headaches when they wake up."

"Guess I'm out of practice being suspicious of open beverages, but I doubt I'd have expected a roofie, either. It's the apocalypse; you'd think people would stop being pointlessly shitty to each other," Bell said, fingering her gun.

"Assholes are still assholes, even after the world ends," Maggie said darkly, tilting her chin up.

She didn't look at John as she said it, but he felt her attention on him just the same, the hatchet between them still only partially buried. Irritation chewed at the back of his mind again; he determinedly kept his mouth shut as he drifted over to open the defunct refrigerator, then whistled lowly at the sight of two and a half more six-packs of bottled beer on the dusty shelves inside. If that wasn't a reward for holding his temper this whole fucking evening, he didn't know what was.

"You know, some people believe what happened three years ago was the Biblical Rapture? And that we're living through the tribulations right now." he mused aloud, retrieving one of the six-packs. "Which would mean, by definition, that no one still alive on this Earth deserves a halo. Now, that's not to say they were asking for it, even if they were dumbasses; but it don't make whoever drugged Lyle and Tec the devil, either. We — all of us — do whatever we think's necessary to survive."

Hal blinked at that, and a suddenly thoughtful expression crossed his face as he glanced toward the front wall of the house. "They could have cut their throats, and didn't. Could've taken both horses, too."

"Fortunately for us, the horse they did take was Tector's, and that horse is just as ornery as Tec is. Here; have a brew, we'll gather up whatever supplies are left, bring the horses up, and camp in the barn, if it's as empty as it looks from outside. If the horse isn't back by moonrise, I'll be very surprised. Probably even money the rider comes back after it; depends on how far they get. And then we'll see what we'll see."

Hal raised a challenging eyebrow as he took one of the bottles. "Not gonna gripe at me about still being nineteen, like you did the last time I came by the Nest to talk to one of my guys?"

"That was in Charleston — and before your old man and I came to an understanding. I somehow doubt I have to worry about him yanking my liquor license anymore," John rolled his eyes. "Mags?"

Maggie shook her head, then jerked a thumb toward the door. "I'll just go get Jesse and Nate and the horses. I'll take any applesauce you find, though?"

"Yes _ma'am_ ," Ox half-saluted her, then took a bottle and headed for the remains of the pantry.

"I'll keep watch out back," Nico offered, taking a bottle as well. "I thought I saw a tool shed back there, anyway; might be worth tagging this place for salvage, too, even with most of the food gone."

John raised an eyebrow, then offered two of the remaining three bottles in the six-pack to their local guides. "One of you want to untie these geniuses and make sure they don't choke in their sleep?"

Bell and Dixon glanced at each other, then threw a quick game of tick, tick, boom — the Second Mass version of rock, paper, scissors. "Damn," Bell said, looking at the results. "All right, I'll do it."

"Dix, scan the ground floor. See if there's anything we can use? I'll be upstairs."

"Oh, and don't forget the garage," Bell added. "I checked on my way through; there's enough cans of diesel out there to fill a truck bed. We might should stack 'em out of sight, but there's enough to be worth the partial tank to fetch 'em from Charleston, for sure."

"That oughtta make Weaver happy," John agreed. Then he shook his head at Tector and Lyle again and headed for the stairs with the last of the six-pack. A quick search, then a call to Charleston; he wasn't looking forward to the report, but as mission disasters went, this one actually could've been a whole lot worse.

He could only hope the next few days to Charlotte were as quiet. He had a feeling tonight's little adventure would be nothing next to tackling one of those fences again.

* * *

The bedrooms upstairs were in about the same condition Mason's had been when he and Tom had crashed there on their way back from the Boston tower: at least twice picked over, with no attempt made to clean up afterward. The debris of a long life, well-lived, mingled with the frozen daydreams of teenagers long gone. John picked up a half-deflated pigskin from the floor of a room decorated with black and gold banners, and wondered if he should hand it to Hal to give his kid brother. Or, hell, maybe John should save it to give to the kid himself; Matt had been a little standoffish since John had stopped being the mentor his dad disapproved of and started sleeping with Tom instead. John had never done the sorta-stepkid thing before; he was more or less winging it, here.

...Or maybe it would just be better to leave well enough alone. He already had the alien one calling him Uncle John; the last thing he needed was Maggie realizing that that would make him her step-parent-adjacent-inlaw-type-whatever as well and raising hell about it with Hal and his dad.

John snorted at the thought, tossing the ball up and down in his hand, then threw it toward the small pile of blankets and such he'd folded up to put with the salvageable supplies. One of the linen cabinets had been properly mothballed, and it had reminded him of that empty house back in Charleston; call it doing his part for the public works committee. Not that he'd ever been, or ever would be, the picket fence type.

Christ, what was he doing, thinking about the Masonets in that context? He was barely managing to communicate with his own _actual_ kid, and co-parenting the various offspring was one of those coupley romantic milestones he'd expected they'd mutually avoid. John shook his head, then picked the room farthest from the stairs and fired up the Volm communicator.

The connection was a lot clearer than the radios, and more secure, too; Tom had confirmed with Cochise that the Espheni couldn't intercept the small device's transmissions. John took a few minutes to go over the route and read off the coordinates for the supplies they'd spotted that day, then passed on the news about the scavenger. Lyle had woken and confirmed it had been a blonde chick, maybe fortyish, who hadn't wanted to listen to anything they'd tried to tell her — though she'd seemed more desperate than cruel.

"Anyway, if she's been holed up here for months, not so much as visiting the barn, I somehow doubt she's an experienced horsewoman. Tector's demon on hooves ought to find its way back sometime tonight, and we'll be on our way in the morning. Couple more days to Charlotte, and we'll get a look at what's going on there."

"But other than your scavenger, it's been quiet?" Tom asked, a certain tension in his voice it took John a second to identify as _worry_.

"Yeah, don't worry; Hal and Maggie are doin' fine. Except for the perpetual argument on what they want to do after the war — but that's nothing new. How're things back in Charleston?"

"Oh, same old, same old. The engineers took one of those obelisks apart; they're pretty sure the things share power somehow when they're active, which is why they all went dead at once. Made more than a few of them start freaking out about sufficiently advanced technology again, and living in a scifi novel. It basically means that as long as one's plugged in, the whole fence is, which will make taking a whole one down a little harder. The next project's going to be bringing in any pieces they can find of the downed Beamers; maybe there'll be a way we can harness the technology they use to hover."

Tom paused there to clear his throat. "And on a more personal note — Lexie's fever broke."

"And how big is the princess now?" John asked, frowning; he'd have thought Tom would sound happier.

"Pretty close to Tanya's age, we think. Younger than Ben, older than Matt." Tom sighed, then continued, more subdued. "Rebecca always wanted four, you know; two pairs so they'd never be alone if they didn't want to be, and there'd always be someone on their side. But after Matt, when she found the lump — well, between the treatments and the risk, there weren't going to be any more. If Anne's idea works, and Lexie stays this age ..."

He trailed off there, which was just as well; most of John's successes at offering comfort tended to involve a lot more touch than talk. "Bet Tanya's pleased," he said, neutrally.

Tom took a deep breath, then let it out; John wondered if it was just his imagination that it sounded relieved. "Yeah; they're becoming pretty good friends. Tanya's been reading Watership Down to her and Matt; I found out a few nights ago. She's got this battered paperback she's been lugging around since Florida, and Matt saw it and got curious, so it's turned into sort of a reading circle."

"She's still got that old thing, huh?" John perked up at the thought. He hadn't had a chance to give Tanya many gifts after she'd reached the age where you could actually _talk_ to a kid about something meaningful; besides which, she'd been the younger of his pair, and the girl, which meant he hadn't had much idea how to relate to her. It was good to know she still remembered some positive things from that age. "Hey, do you think, maybe ..."

Tom snorted. "We're never telling Dan I let you use sensitive military hardware like a cell phone, but ... since I happen to know she's off shift eating dinner with Lourdes right now ..." He trailed off, and John heard muffled, distant words. Then he was back. "I sent a sentry to get her; I'll show her how to work the comm."

John swallowed past the knot of emotion in his throat. "And then back to your lonely bed. You sure you don't want to really give these things a workout? You could always call me back in a while ..."

"John! I am _not_ going to have phone sex on a Volm frequency; I wouldn't put it past some of Cochise's colleagues to be monitoring it just to make sure the indigenes aren't misusing their technology," Tom said, audible exasperation burning away the last of the melancholy undertone to his words.

"Cochise's dad, you mean. Might give him a thrill to listen in; God knows he seems to need one," John replied, unrepentant. "But maybe it's for the best. I gotta take watch in a couple of hours anyway; I'll let you know what happens with the scavenger."

"Yeah, and — hey, she's here," Tom said distractedly. "Love you. Hey, Tanya, it's your dad ..."

There wasn't time for a response; truthfully, John wasn't even sure Tom knew he'd said it, or that he'd _meant_ to say it in the first place. But the jolt that went through him at those words stayed with him during the rest of the conversation with his daughter, and long into the witching hour, like a burr in the back of his mind.

* * *

As it happened, the horse did not, in fact, show up before sunrise. John started out the day short-tempered and annoyed from the inconvenience and the lack of sleep when Lyle shook him awake from a cold bed, and his mood didn't improve much over a breakfast of travel biscuits paired with pickled okra the scavenger hadn't had a use for while he unfolded the map and compared times and distances with what the Volm scout bugs had picked up. There was no help for it; they couldn't risk doubling anyone up if they had to move quickly, it would tax the horses. Someone would have to stay behind, either to wait for the salvage crew from Charleston or make their way back using the abandoned bicycle.

Bell volunteered; John would miss her sass, but they'd already mostly passed her area of guide expertise, and she was more than capable of taking care of herself, so he gave her the nod. Then the rest of them loaded up and headed out, skirting Winnsboro and taking Route 200 back toward the asphalt river of I-77 running north.

They'd just reached a crossing with another two-lane road the signs called the Mobley Highway that was marked with a 20 on the map, when the faint sounds of cursing and an annoyed, neighing horse improved John's day a little. Off to the west arm of the crossing, cleared fields led toward what looked like another family farm, marked by a couple of barn-sized buildings and a rusting graveyard of tractors. A couple hundred yards down that branch of the road, a slight, blonde-haired form stood in the weedy verge, wrestling with the reins of Tector's horse.

He assumed she'd been trying to get it to move in a farmlike direction, though by the looks of things she'd been at it for awhile. She was smeared with grass and dirt from ass to elbows from her initial slip from the saddle, and her knees were showing through holes in her jeans, but she was still trying; there was a lot of waving arms, alternately cajoling and threatening tones, and furious body posture going on. John smirked, slung his rifle across his lap, then gestured to the others to form up on him and head in her direction.

She didn't run when she heard them coming, just made one last swipe for the horse's reins, then tipped her chin up and squared her shoulders in their direction, clutching a shotgun in her arms. "Back off!" she yelled. "You come any closer, and _someone's_ gonna get shot! You really think you can take me before I hit one of you?"

"As a matter of fact, I do," John drawled in reply, though he held up a hand to bring the group to a halt just far enough away not to crowd her. "Tector, the guy whose horse you stole? He don't miss, and he can tag you from a lot further out than this. And he's just a little bit pissed at the performance you put on back at the farm."

The woman set her jaw, eyes sparking with trapped fury, but lowered the muzzle of the shotgun. "Yeah, well, you tell me what you'd have done in my place. One girl, two dangerous-looking guys who say there's another half-dozen of you back up the road, not enough food left in the cupboards to be worth fighting over, and two big beautiful horses just _waiting_ for a feminine touch. In my book? That's finders, keepers."

Up close, the woman was more or less what John had been expecting: a tough, smart cookie who was doing her best to maximize her assets. She had long, dark blonde hair with a few threads of grey that she was still making the effort to keep brushed smooth, and wore a heavy brown suede jacket with a fur lining, a pair of fingerless gloves, a black shirt appliquéd with a silver skull, and fraying black jeans tucked into sturdy boots. The shirt was a v-neck, flirting close enough to her cleavage to make it interesting if she bent forward, and there was quite a bit of fire in her personality; yeah, he could see how she'd managed to take Lyle and Tector off guard.

"Adverse property laws only apply to properties deliberately abandoned by their owners — for at least a _decade_ , at a minimum," John told her, amused by her pluck. "I don't think that argument's going to cut it, in this case. And I wouldn't advise trying for the nine-tenths argument, either; given that there's ten of us and only one of you, it should be pretty obvious this is one of those one-tenth situations."

"Are you kidding me with this?" she said, then glanced behind him, unerringly fixing her attention on Maggie, the lone woman among the scout troop with Bell left back at the farm. "Does this guy speak for all of you, or just the assholes? I'm not gonna let you guys just leave me out here for the aliens! Surely you can spare a horse for a woman in a jam? I don't see anyone here who needs one, anyway!"

"That would be because we had to leave one of our group behind this morning," Maggie replied, unimpressed. "Don't look to me for sympathy. I appreciate your concern for your personal safety — believe me, I do — but poor planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on ours."

"Yeah, we left our resident bleeding hearts behind in Charleston. If you head that way, they might even take you in," John allowed. They probably would, too; Mason might have turned out to be a dyed-in-the-wool pragmatist underneath the surface optimism, but the heroic image persisted for a reason. Second chances were a big thing with him. "It's a town of several thousand now, I'm sure they could find some use for — whatever it is you do."

She gave a bitter laugh. "Graphic designer for a company that sold water-resistant cell phone cases? Yeah, I don't think so. Like I'd believe it anyway; I'd be surprised if there were several thousand human beings left in the whole _country_ , never mind one town. _You're_ the most people I've seen all at once in months."

"What, you haven't heard of the New United States?" Hal spoke up then, frowning. "I thought Manchester and Bressler sent scouts all through this area before we even got here, and Charleston's almost doubled in population since."

"Are those names supposed to mean something to me?" she shook her head, scoffing.

"Never mind him," John sighed, tired of the conversation. "His daddy's the President, so he's a little proud. Now, if you'll just step away from the horse, we'll leave you your personal possessions and a few days' worth of ... huh."

He trailed off there, suddenly on edge and not entirely certain why; maybe the silence that had fallen in a bubble all around them, maybe the sway of a branch, maybe a muffled metallic scrape, but he was abruptly certain they weren't alone anymore. Which had to be deliberate, because the drones hadn't caught any patrols for miles.

"Boss?" Tector said sharply, turning to the wooded side of the road with his handgun at the ready. The big Volm rifle they'd brought along was still attached to the saddle of his horse, but it hadn't impaired his instincts any. Lyle, Ox, and the others took their cue from him and came to alert as well, alarming the scavenger, who shied back closer to the horse.

"Whoa, whoa, what's going on here, guys?" she said, holding up her hands, the one empty and the other carefully pointing the shotgun toward the sky.

"What's going _on_ is that you went stumbling around in the dark last night drawing attention, and might've led us straight into an ambush," John replied, tersely. "Tec, if there's mechs around ..."

"On it," Tector nodded, and swung out of the saddle, tossing the reins of Bell's horse to Nate.

"Wait, you aren't really going to just _leave_ me?" the scavenger objected, eyes wide as she immediately shifted to put herself between Tector and the horse.

"Get out of my way, lady, I need that rifle if I'm gonna ... aw, _shit_!" Tector thrust her behind him as the kudzu veiling the wall of close-planted pines along that part of the highway suddenly tore like a curtain opening onto a battle scene: _Intrant Skitters_.

The next few minutes were pure chaos. Tector got to the horse in time to pull the rifle on the first mech to bowl over the rusting machinery it had been hiding behind and draw a bead on the group, then heaved the scavenger up to Lyle, who easily sheltered her against him with one arm while firing at Skitters with the other. John got the rest of them porcupined up and riding for a defensible position — _any_ defensible position — post-haste, Maggie and Hal shoulder to shoulder with him in place of Tector and Lyle, while Ox, Dixon and Nico had their backs. Jesse and Nate, the least experienced, aimed from the center of the moving circle, guiding the empty-saddled horse.

If there'd been more than just a couple of the Mega-mechs, or if Tector hadn't been on the ball, John doubted they'd have been able to escape so easily. But no Espheni could have reasonably predicted who they'd catch in their improvised back-country cordon, and a whole mess of dead Skitters later the group finally broke contact somewhere in the woods to the east of Route 200.

John called them to a halt again to listen for a minute; then he gave permission to reload, check for wounds, and maybe wash off the worst of the mess in the little slow-moving creek they'd used to disguise their trail. Widely spaced trees marched along its banks, crowded with ankle-high greenery that the horses nipped at as they cooled down, and the brown water rippled listlessly around downed, rotting branches. For a miracle, only one of the Berserkers had an injury worth noting; Ox had taken a Skitter claw across the back that had torn through jacket and shirt down to dark skin and left a long, shallow, sluggishly bleeding gash across his spine. The rest, including the horses, mainly had a random assortment of scrapes, bruising, and a heated graze or two from mechfire.

The scavenger woman came to a halt on the bank of the stream and just stood there for the first few minutes, arms wrapped tightly around herself as she stared around at the rest of them. She shook her head at offers of both damp rags and a bottle of water in favor of watching them work, tight-lipped and silent, but she wasn't pale or visibly bleeding, so John left her to herself for a minute in favor of wrapping up a scratched wrist. Then he helped Ox tear up his wrecked shirt for bandage material and ease a fresh Henley over his head.

She'd found her self-possession again by the time he was ready to deal with her, just as stubborn as before, but maybe a little less angry. She finally took water from Lyle, who stared her down with a challenging expression until she ducked her head and acquiesced, then finally picked her way along the bank to John.

"Uh, hi, by the way," she said, thrusting a hand in his direction. "My name's Sara."

One of those, then; whether from privacy or a desire to leave the past behind, a lot of people had defaulted to mononyms once civilization stopped keeping track of them. John had never quite seen the point.

"Well, hello, Sara," he replied, giving her hand a brief, polite shake. "John Pope. You can call me Pope."

She cleared her throat. "Nice to meet you, uh, Pope ... no, sorry, I can't call you that. It's just that the word makes me picture the robes, and the, the ..." She laughed a little, gesturing over her head in illustration of a miter. "Sorry! I hope you don't mind, but I think I'm gonna have to call you John."

John raised a skeptical eyebrow at her, wondering where this was going. "Call me whatever you like, as long as you don't attack any more of my people. Look, the thing is — by the time you could get back to the farmhouse, the team from Charleston will have probably already been and gone with the supplies that were left. The fishheads will probably pick up their patrols on these roads, too, after they lost those two mechs. That means we can't leave you here either, not if it might tip 'em off what direction we're going. So what you're gonna do is hand your weapons over to Lyle, ride with us a day or two on the spare until we do what we've come to do at Charlotte, and _then_ we'll let you go, wherever you want, so long as it's on our route. Understood?"

She nodded, then looked down at the water bottle in her hands, fiddling with it. "I've never — I've never fought those things before, only run and hid from them. And it's been more than a year since I even had to do that much. Do you think you could maybe give me some pointers on what to do while I'm tagging along?"

The angle of her body toward his suggested she might have something other than fighting in mind when she mentioned pointers. John didn't fault her for the reaction; but her timing left a little to be desired.

"Tell you what, if you can talk Lyle or Tector into helping? You can ask 'em whatever you want," he shrugged. "I do want your word, though, that you're not going to try taking off again, for both our safety and yours."

"Yes sir, general sir," she said, wryly. Then she took a step or two closer, lowering her voice a little as her smile turned more coy. "You _are_ the leader of this motley bunch, right? So, assuming this city you all come from is about as imaginary as it turns out your alien-fighting skills are — where do you fit into the hierarchy?"

Maggie had been crouched down by the stream bank rinsing Skitter blood from her knife; she looked up at Sara's oh-so-innocent question and snorted, saving him the effort of trying to find some even more discouraging response that wouldn't send her stomping off into the trees. "We'd all kind of like to know that ourselves," she said, dryly. "Neither 'proprietor of the Nest' nor 'President's boyfriend' show up on the official org charts, and the responsibilities attached to 'leader of the Berserkers' seem to vary by the day."

Sara blinked, then blinked again and took a breath, still smiling. "That sounds ... complicated," she said gamely, and John's respect for her sheer balls went up another notch. She might be inexperienced at fighting, but she sure had spirit; had he still been single and hard-up when he came across her, he might actually have been tempted. Women weren't _impossible_ , just not usually to his taste.

"...Except for the 'proprietor' part," she continued, cocking her head to one side. "So what's this Nest, then? Restaurant? Bar? ...Bookstore?"

"Bar," he nodded, then jerked his head toward Lyle. "Lyle and I run the place; found a couple of guys that knew a thing or two about brewing. Figured people would need a place to blow off steam even more after the end of the world. Plus, it passes the time when we're not out here." He gestured vaguely at the surrounding woods.

"Sounds like my kind of place," Sara said, maintaining her smile as she backed off a step, then another, angling herself downstream. "I'll be sure to stop by sometime — assuming, you know, this whole Charleston thing turns out to be real. So, I think I'm just gonna see if I can get this blood off my jacket ..." She jerked her thumb behind her, then turned and walked away at a nonchalant, not-too-hurried pace.

Maggie snorted again, watching her go, and John gave her the evil eye. "What was that all about?"

She raised her eyebrows at him, and the expression on her face was what one might charitably call judgmental. "That woman was hitting on you, and you were letting her," she said. "So I enlightened her."

Ah, Mags. It wasn't the first time she'd stuck her nose into his relationship with Tom; he ought to have been expecting that. It wasn't just that Tom was her boyfriend's father, either; he'd been the catalyst for a world-shattering change in her life for the better, and that degree of deferential respect was not easy to shake.

"And just which part bugged you more?" he sneered, crossing his arms. "Sara for latching onto me as the most attractive option present? Or me for trying to find a way to let her down easy? The woman's upset enough already, I didn't want to push her into bolting again and blabbing to the first fishhead to crack her skull open."

Maggie's lip curled a little. "Oh, is _that_ the reason. Sure you're not coming down with a case of wandering eye? I might not think much of _her_ taste, but she and Tom both deserve better."

"As if _deserving's_ got much to do with it," John scoffed at the notion. "It's the _end of the world_ , Maggie May, and niceties like 'falling in love' or holding out for the perfect partner are a first world luxury. Hell, a _twentieth century_ luxury; ask the Professor sometime, if you don't believe me. The dating pool's a damn sight smaller than it used to be, and the needs people bring into relationships have a lot more to do with survival than making the heart go pitter-pat. A vulnerable woman like Sara, with her looks? Of course she's going to latch on to the first guy she meets who she thinks is more likely to protect her than rape her."

Maggie's expression darkened at that; John held up a hand. "Yeah, exactly. I might've fallen down on the job on the protection front before, but the impulse wasn't wrong. It's human nature to find someone who seems good enough and settle, especially with threat of death or worse always hanging over your shoulder."

She seemed to read something more into that than he'd intended, because a little of the curdled anger seeped out of her scowl, replaced by something more speculative. "You think _Tom's_ settling. What need could you possibly meet for him that would make him throw Anne over in your favor, if not love?"

" _He_ thinks it's love, probably because he never really had the chance to grieve for his wife, and anything less would be an insult to her memory." He'd put some thought into it since the comm transmission the night before. "And none of your damn business. But ask yourself this: what need is Hal looking to meet with _you_ now that he's out of the wheelchair his last girlfriend put him in? Spoiler alert: judging by the arguments I've been overhearing, it may involve baby Masons and white picket fences."

"And _that_ is none of _your_ business," she spat back, a muscle jumping in her jaw. Then she turned and stalked abruptly away in the direction Sara had gone, undoubtedly to congratulate her on her narrow escape.

John just shook his head. In his opinion, the fact that Tom had consistently clung harder every time John gave him proof he wasn't going away, said a _lot_ about which stage of the self-actualization pyramid Rebecca's death, several near-death experiences with his children, and Anne's defection — however temporary — had stranded the Professor on, and it wasn't the halfway-up 'love and belonging' strata. If he wanted to delude himself about it, though, John had no intention of bringing it to his attention; it just so happened that Tom was meeting a few rather foundational needs of John's own.

John blew out a breath, then started the process of herding everyone back together again. The sooner they put this particular patch of Espheni-controlled territory behind them, the better.

* * *

They skulked in the woods just out of sight of the interstate for the remainder of the day; it slowed them down further, but also kept them out of sight of any pursuit, so John considered it a fair trade. Beamers couldn't sense them, mechs couldn't reach them, and Skitters wouldn't know where to look. They stopped for the night in an abandoned, half-fallen-down church just off one of the freeway's exits, and headed out toward Charlotte again early the next morning.

Sara, John was unsurprised to note, had first apologized to and then needled Lyle to see if he'd retaliate for the drugging incident; she obviously had a keen sense of human hierarchy. He wished her luck; Lyle hadn't taken anyone on since Crazy Lee's death, as far as he could tell. Maggie, on the other hand, was a perfect little gloomcloud, even around Hal. Neither situation threatened the mission, though, so he chose to leave well enough alone.

They passed two more Skitter and mech patrols that last day, one on I-77 and one on the ringroad, the I-485 loop. Finding a way around the massive dual-highway interchange and crossing the creek on the other side took more than a little time and ingenuity to accomplish; John was muddy to the thigh and the sun was low again by the time they were finally past those obstacles and hunkered down in an old business park paralleling the northbound freeway. He'd decided to send the drones out one more time before proceeding; they only had a couple, but it shouldn't take more to find the fences and check out the setup. He'd caught sight of a green glow the night before, but hadn't wanted to press at that distance.

According to Mason, who'd looked it up in one of Manchester's books, the city had held at least three quarters of a million people before the Espheni arrived; John had no idea how many might've survived until the fence went up, but there had definitely been enough to make it worth their while to site a prison there, as Mason had guessed. He couldn't get a good look from beyond the green hatchwork of the fence, but he could see enough to extrapolate based on the size of the area inside; there had to be several hundred people in there, minimum. No kids among 'em, except a few babes in arms, which tallied with Cochise's report, but not many senior citizens, either. Just the healthy, the lucky ... and those who knew how best to take advantage, like John.

"What is _that_ ," Sara said, staring at the miniaturized holographic images displayed by the Volm interface.

"Prison fence," Tector told her, tersely. "Espheni tried to put one up around Charleston, too, but we chased 'em off before they could finish. Lost some damn good men doin' it. That's why we're out here — to try and find out what they're doin' in there before they come for us, again. Free these people, if we can swing it; but we'll probably have to make another trip. Got a mission to run up in Virginia, too."

"You aren't actually going to _go_ there, are you?" she said, rather faintly.

"Can't see what we need to see from all the way out here," John shrugged at her. "Don't worry, we'll stop a little short and leave someone with the horses; you can hang back there, too. Wouldn't want you there anyway; you barely know which end of the shotgun to point at the enemy."

The calculated insult put her back up immediately. "Hey! I may not have killed any of those things, but I kept myself safe for over two years — your guys weren't the first to find me and think they had a right to something of mine," she said, tipping her chin up. "Maybe it's about time I started sticking it to the _real_ enemy."

John chuckled to himself and lifted an eyebrow at Lyle. "You willing to keep an eye on her?"

The big man shrugged, but he didn't look displeased. "Whatever you say, Boss."

"All right then, sweetheart; a nighttime stroll it is. We're about nine miles back from the fence; looks like they dropped it around most of Uptown. Not a hell of a lot of greenery in that part of town, but there are a few neighborhood parks, according to the map." He unfolded the paper accordion with the little blown-up city inset someone had looted from an abandoned convenience store, and spread it out for everyone to take a look, tracing a callused fingertip around the loop of the city center. "We'll stop there, sneak in on foot, make contact with someone on the inside if we can. Goal is to find whatever the hell it is that's powering the fence."

Hal frowned thoughtfully down at the road grid, eyes scanning over the yellow lines of freeway, the little patches of green, and the notations for the Charlotte Hornets and the convention center. "Why did they put it there, do you think? Can't be because that many people actually lived there — the downtown grid was mostly bombed to hell in the bigger cities. The few skyscrapers that aren't rubble in the streets are probably unsound as hell, and the biggest green patches in _there_ are in the cemeteries. Why not a residential district, the golf course maybe, somewhere people could grow their own food? They've got to be feeding them; no way they aren't starving otherwise, and they have to want them for _something_ if they're going to all this trouble."

Nico shook his head. "Every time your dad sends out a scavenging party, he tells us 'Bullets before food before fuel before entertainment'. Prisoners don't get weapons. The next most basic need they can control is food."

"Exactly," John pointed at him. "They _want_ people uncomfortable and constantly hungry, fighting each other for whatever does get dropped in. That way their prisoners aren't banding together and fighting back. Nobody ever said the Espheni were stupid."

"Nah, just kind of like Voldemort on a mass scale," Hal snorted. "Vulnerable only to _the power he knows not_. Never thought Dad's nighttime reading with Ben would ever actually be relevant to my life."

"It still isn't," John scoffed, remembering taking Brandon to one of the movies; he'd been treated to an impromptu lecture afterward on everything his son thought was silly in the series. "Unless you think it's a valid life choice to _defend_ the bad guy to death after he's already on the verge of winning it all. I'd kinda prefer to kick the Espheni off the planet before things get that far."

"Are you ... seriously drawing a comparison to Harry Potter, here?" Sara blinked at both of them, astonished.

"Yeah, he's not up to his dad's level of historical analogies quite yet, I'm afraid," John grinned at Hal, earning another highly annoyed look from the teenage warrior. "Keep practicing, though, Junior."

"All right, enough talk; are we gonna get out there, or what?" Maggie braced the heels of her hands against the pearl handles of her revolvers, tucked securely in their underarm holsters. "Time's a'wasting."

"I would by no means suspend any pleasure of yours," John drawled, earning another eyeroll from her as he folded up the map. "As soon as your boyfriend calls the drones back in, we'll go. Pack it up, boys and girls!"

Wet and muddy and tired they might be; but it was finally time to rock and roll.

* * *

It turned out to be a very good thing they _had_ snuck up in person. One thing the drone's eye view hadn't shown him was that the duplicate of the big Espheni ship they'd seen on the horizon back in Charleston was tethered to the ground here in Charlotte, behaving more like a blimp than a spaceship as it slowly circled over the fenced area ... and that the tether came down in very close proximity to one of the obelisks.

"I think we done found the power source," Tector said grimly, scanning the ship and its connection to the ground with the scope of his rifle. "Don't know where the _ship's_ getting its power, but it's definitely usin' what it's got to run the fence. And there don't seem to be much in the way of patrols looking outward, apart from a few watchtowers — those alien assholes are too busy makin' the prisoners' lives hell, instead."

"More of an internment camp, then, than a regular prison," Hal wrinkled his nose, following Tector's gaze with a pair of field glasses. "Getting a little too World War II up in here for comfort — though I guess that's probably the point. Dad said when he was up in that ship with the Espheni before, they talked about setting aside protected areas for any humans who surrendered — made it sound all idyllic and shit. This must be what that concept looks like when it's at home."

"No flies on Tom Mason, no sir," John drawled.

"Something else they overlooked this time; the rail line goes right under the fence, next to the tether. Look. Even if we don't get tracks for the BFG this trip, we can probably still use it to take this motherfucker down. Shoot the ship, which conveniently can't get away; short out the tether; take down the fence," Tector pointed out.

John took the field glasses Hal handed him and followed Tec's gestures, easily noting the same features, even on a dark night with only a thumbnail crescent of moon visible in the sky. The fence made its own eerie floodlamp zone, rendering the area by the fence a no-man's-land that they wouldn't be crossing without a lot more scouting to map out the alien patrols. But it did make it easier to pick out the relevant details. Like how the only Skitters he'd seen since the last patrol they'd ducked out on the I-485 were the ones inside the fence with the prisoners.

"Gonna get ugly when we do," Maggie agreed, hovering behind Hal. "But yeah, it's doable."

"You folks are all fucking crazy," Sara murmured lowly, shaking her head at them all. "You seriously think you could take that thing down?"

"You ain't seen the grid gun yet," Lyle told her. "We were there when they fired it the last time. Taking it down's gonna be easy. Saving the people's gonna be the hard part."

"It always is," John sighed. "Okay then, boys and girls. Hal, Mags, Ox, Tector, follow the line of the I-77; we'll go right around the loop, check for weak points or anything else our esteemed President might want to know. It doesn't look like we'll get a chance to talk to anyone on the inside this time, so make note of everything you see. We'll camp for the night somewhere on the other side; Jesse, Dix and Nate will meet us with the horses."

Everyone murmured agreement, even Sara, and they moved out with determined faces and quiet feet, in macro echo of the assault on the farmhouse two evenings before. Too bad everyone in Charleston wasn't up to Berserker standards, or there'd be no stopping them; as it was, they'd yet to come up against an obstacle they couldn't eventually overcome. It was a good feeling; almost enough to make him believe Mason was right.

About the war, that is; not about Tom being a part-alien threat to Charleston. And even if he was — John _was_ a selfish son-of-a-bitch, and they had Volm stun technology now.

John shook his head as that prickly issue finally settled itself in the back of his mind, and moved out, trailing Lyle, Nico, and Sara in his wake like a band of deadly ducklings in the dark.

* * *

The next morning, they set out for the next potential fence site, Greensboro, after reporting in — and after, to no one's surprise, Sara announced her intention to keep tagging along after all. It was a wrench to leave without doing anything else, but even Pope's Berserkers weren't crazy enough to kick over that massive of an anthill without a flamethrower backing them up. Or even a bomb; but they were all out of TNT.

The surprise came maybe an hour down the road to the north. John was pretty damn familiar with it between the original trek down from Boston and his and Mason's weary journey after the plane crash. It hadn't quite occurred to him, though, until the moment he caught sight of another group headed their way, that Keystone, West Virginia, and Charleston, South Carolina, were roughly equidistant from Charlotte, _North_ Carolina.

The strangers were moving in a mix of surplus military vehicles and bicycle-powered transports, and about three quarters of the group wore military uniforms. But the two officers at the head of the group were blonde, fresh-faced, and female — and one of them was more than a little familiar. _Lieutenant Fisher_.

They'd set out partially to find the other President, but Hathaway's coterie had come to _them_.

Whatever that portended ... John didn't flatter himself that it was anything good.

-(4/10)-


	5. Masters of Perplexity

_"They are makers of enemies [ ...], they are inciters to wrongs and violence, they are masters of hidden intentions as well, they are black and white, masters of stupidity, masters of perplexity."_  
— Popul Vuh, Part Three

* * *

"Their story's about what you'd expect," John's voice carried, dry and acerbic, over the Volm communication device. "Espheni hit 'em hard en route — probably tracking 'em by the engines in their Humvees, since they don't seem to have ever figured the insulation trick — and only about a third of 'em got away. Hathaway and most of their senior officers were among the casualties. Thing is, the fishheads weren't aiming to kill; Lieutenant Shoots-First said the mechfire was mostly set to stun, and some fucked up new Skittery things with wings kept grabbing people off the ground. Hathaway's last order before the lead started flying was for any survivors to make their way to Charleston, hoping, I guess, that they'd have better luck with us than trying to push on for Norfolk Naval Base. They'd had the same idea your boy did, there."

"Damn." Tom rubbed a hand over his face, shaking his head. "I'd hoped we'd been able to warn them in time."

The second comm call of the morning had reached him out at the Liberty Tree; he hadn't expected one from John so soon after his report on the state of things in Charlotte, and had answered it thinking it would be Cochise. Much to John's amusement. There'd been very little levity in the rest of the conversation, though. Tom had withdrawn to one of the empty buildings off the square — the house whose porch they'd memorably occupied a few days before, as it happened — to take the details.

Good thing, too. Nearly three years after his administration had fled the invasion and set up in a postage-stamp-sized town in West Virginia, Hathaway didn't mean much to the average citizen of Charleston on a day to day basis. They hadn't even known he was alive until a few months ago. But now that they _did_ know, losing the connection he represented to the halcyon days of Before would be a significant blow to morale.

"So Lieutenant Fisher's in charge of the survivors?" he continued, trying to figure how this new wrinkle would affect the balance in the city. The thirtyish officer was the hard-believing type; she'd shot Crazy Lee the day her group first scouted Charleston because she'd been convinced that the city was filled with Espheni collaborators, but she'd also been a staunch defender from the moment she'd seen the Volm demonstrate that not all aliens were the same ... and that the force multiplier Volm technology represented might actually give them a chance at winning the war. He could work with her.

"Nah, they managed to hang onto one of their Captains as well — another blonde, name of Marshall — and there's a few other lieutenants in the bunch. She's just the one that knows us, so they're using her as a spokesperson."

"Anything you can tell me about Captain Marshall, then, before they arrive?" Tom winced.

John snorted. "I wouldn't be the one to ask about that — you ever hear any of Weaver's stories about his time in the Sandbox?"

Was he suggesting Dan knew her? Tom cast his thoughts back, but couldn't come up with anything that fit; before the attack on the structure in Boston he and Dan had been at odds as often as not, and after Tom's return from captivity they'd always had something else urgent to talk about. "Can't say I have, no; why, have you?"

"Yeah, some of those long nights all those months you were gone, the first time. Guess he had other things to bond with _you_ about. But a few of his tales had a Lieutenant Katie Marshall in 'em. Old flame, from what I gathered — or devoted acolyte, at the very least. He ought to be able to give you a better picture of her character than I could. Though just between you and me, she's kind of a hardass. Fought me about getting their vehicles off the road long enough to strip a building for that Pink Panther shit, and she's wasn't very happy about taking orders from a guy without a defined rank even after I namedropped Weaver to get her attention."

"Somehow, I'm not surprised, if Dan was any kind of a mentor figure to her back then," Tom huffed a laugh. "Small world. All right; I'll ask him. You going to accompany them back?"

"From what they've said about the road north? Yeah, not much point to scoping Greensboro or Richmond until we can do something about the fences. And now that they know to watch Norfolk, the fishheads have probably got anything left there locked down tight."

"All right, then; your call," Tom said, then paused and cleared his throat. "You've, ah, you've been missed."

"Yeah? And how's the princess doing this morning?" John's tone was wry as he dodged the comment — but also honestly asking about Alexis' welfare; something Tom appreciated almost as much as he would have a more personal response.

"In the infirmary, actually. That's where I've been most of the morning," he explained.

"Sick? I thought she was done with her latest growth-fever?"

"Exactly — which is why Anne thought it would be the perfect time to try and stop it from ever happening again. I was out getting a breath of fresh air when you commed; after so many hours, I couldn't take staring at the sheetrock in the quarantine room a moment longer. Reminded me too much of when Hal had his eyebug."

John snorted. "Paint job might help — that whole underground mall space feels temporary, half-finished like it is, and the infirmary's the worst. Cheer the place up a little. It's not really the impression we want to be giving of the new capital anyway, I shouldn't think, not with a bunch of Hathaway's partisans about to descend on it."

"One more thing to add to my list of tasks this week," Tom sighed. "It's a good idea, though. Thanks."

"She'll be fine, though, right?" John dragged the conversation back on point. "Alexis, I mean."

"Anne and Dr. Kadar both think so, and I've got no choice but to trust them on this. But it's hard to see her lying there unconscious, hooked up to all those machines. The last time I saw someone being treated that intensively, it was Dan, and we nearly lost him."

"Yeah, well, she's a Mason," John replied, gruffly. "Not a one of you knows the meaning of the word 'quit'. She'll be up and around again in no time, pestering everyone with those serious questions of hers, just you wait."

Tom's mouth curved slightly — then faded into a frown again as he contemplated the distance John had yet to cover before he could see it himself. "Don't forget, you're part of the clan now, too. I fully expect you to make it back here in one piece. Shepherding that many people — it's going to make you a ripe target, coming back south."

" _Provisional_ member," John scoffed — though he didn't otherwise deny it. "See you in a few days, Professor."

"All right. Mason, out," Tom replied, warmly.

There was a brief, somehow tense pause on the other end — then Pope signed off, too, ending the call.

Tom glanced up at the Liberty Tree again, eyes unerringly drawn to the metal leaf bearing Rebecca's name. He'd heard his wife's voice several times in his dreams lately; some of them nightmares, some not, probably stirred up by that VR interrogation device of Karen's that had made him relive a warped version of his pre-war existence. His dream-self had tried to apologize to Rebecca several times, for reasons he could never quite recall after he woke. But she'd told him not to be even more of an ass than he'd been already, and kept bringing up their old family custom of looking at the moon whenever they were apart. He hadn't told John about that lunar habit yet; maybe on the next call, maybe when he got back. But it had got Tom thinking about the branches of life: the roads taken and the roads avoided, and the human costs of those choices.

Lexie wasn't going to be one of them, though. Or John, if he had anything to say about it.

He tucked that thought close, then turned his back on the Tree and headed indoors.

He was most of the way back to the infirmary — with its bland white lighting, raw sheetrock walls, and sky-blue tarps hung everywhere for privacy; John really did have a point about painting the place — when he heard a voice calling, and turned to see Ben hurrying up from a side corridor leading to another of the mall's entrances.

"Dad! Hey, you got a minute?" Ben looked ... uncomfortable, though not urgently so. It reminded Tom of the way he'd often behaved as a kid when something had happened that he _knew_ he should tell Tom and Rebecca about, but he really didn't want to explain. Most often after he'd been squabbling with, or covering for, one of his brothers.

Tom glanced in the direction of the infirmary, then back toward his son. Alexis would still be out a while yet, and she had her mother's full attention. He could spare some time for Ben's problem. "Sure, son. What's up?"

Ben twisted his hands together in front of him, not quite wringing them, but close. "Actually, would you mind if we talked in your office?"

Okay — so it was a Presidential thing, then, not a personal one. Or else — something too personal to be spoken of in the hall? Tom had been half-expecting one of his sons to tell him they'd got someone pregnant, or caught one of the STDs passing around Charleston, sooner or later; he hadn't exactly set a good example on that front. Given an environment well supplied with adrenaline and danger and poorly supplied with prophylactics ... Tom tried very hard not to pay any attention to the details of his older children's romantic lives, for everyone's peace of mind. It was one thing to be aware that Hal and Maggie shared a room, and that Ben shared a connection with Denny through their spikes that no ordinary human relationship could match; he really did not need to know the details.

"Sure, Ben. Should I call anyone else in?" he asked, casually.

"Uh, no; not yet, anyway. Maybe Anne and Dr. Kadar at some point — but not just yet." Ben made a frustrated face as he fell in beside Tom, headed in the direction of the Presidential office.

It was a little surreal to realize that Ben was very nearly as tall as his father, now; and to remember that the last time he'd seen Ben and Hal standing next to one another, they'd been virtually the same height. Another consequence of the Skitter harness, perhaps? It made him seem much older than his actual sixteen.

"Is this about Alexis, then?" He could think of few other reasons for that pair to be involved before anyone else.

"Uh — no? Well, yes; but it actually has more to do with you." Ben's frown deepened.

"Okay, now I'm really curious," Tom said, nodding to the sentry outside his office as he opened the door and admitted Ben inside. He hadn't shared Dr. Kadar's report about his own DNA with his sons yet, so what could Ben be talking about? "Tell me. What's going on?"

Ben swallowed, then licked his lips nervously and came farther into the room. "It's — the rebel Skitters. A new group of them showed up asking for refuge after the latest attack. Apparently, a lot of their embedded spies have started going missing, starting about four weeks ago; at first they thought it might have been normal disruption of contact due to the sudden retreat north away from the Volm, but the problem's only gotten worse since the Espheni came back and tried to fence us in. And now these refugees — they say the Espheni have figured out how to identify them somehow, and they're making the spies and sympathizers disappear one by one."

"That can't be good," Tom replied, alarmed. He wasn't sure what that had to do with him and Alexis, but it was clearly a significant threat to the war effort. "They've made a real difference in this fight over the last couple of years. Do they have any idea how the Espheni are tracking them down?"

"No," Ben shook his head, "and that's not even the worst part. They think ... well, that it's like with us and the fences. No bodies have turned up; the fishheads aren't killing the rebels they capture anymore. But none of the missing have resumed contact, either. The rebel leader thinks they're _transforming_ them somehow, taking their free will again and turning them into something else."

Tom remembered John's description of a new flying creature north of Charlotte, and thought he might have some idea what they were being turned into. It was a horrifying thought, and said a lot to him about what 'peace' meant to the Espheni who'd hoped to use his daughter as their enforcer. "Well, tell him I appreciate the heads-up. And make sure he knows we still value the alliance, even if they can't provide as much intel as before."

"That's not all, either," Ben said hesitantly, wringing his hands further. "Though the last part is — more weird than worse? One of the new Skitters was apparently at the structure in Boston when you were there. When you killed Karen. Not one of the lieutenant types; one of the background guys. But he said he knew some things, about why they're so fixated on you ... and about what happened to Alexis while she was there."

Tom flinched, feeling as though he'd just been struck with a jolt of electricity. So it did trace back to Red Eye's experiment and its fallout, after all. "What exactly did he say?"

Ben shook his head. "He wouldn't tell me or Denny; he said he needed to talk to you, first."

Because he was the one involved? Or because ... "He knows we got rid of Karen's moles, right? And even if we hadn't — now that she's dead, no one else would be able to access any eyebugs she planted."

Both Lourdes and Hal were still recovering from the experience of being remote-puppeted by an Espheni Overlord; Hal was carrying a lot of misplaced guilt, and was more generally suspicious of others, and Lourdes had a disturbing tendency to leap on the least little wish he or John might express in her presence because they'd been the ones to figure out what had happened to her and stop her before she could implement any of Karen's planned acts of mass destruction. Anne was very stringent about examining anyone who'd had contact with Espheni biologics now, to prevent anything similar happening at a new Overlord's instigation.

Ben nodded jerkily. "He was thinking about their old leader, Red Eye, when he talked with me about it."

Even though he'd already guessed that much, the confirmation still came an unpleasant blow to Tom. He'd originally met the red-eyed Skitter when he'd tortured him, then deliberately freed him, the first time Tom was captured by the Espheni. The alien had later died helping the Second Mass destroy a massive Espheni device meant to keep the Volm away from Earth before the grid went up. Red Eye had been fixated on Tom the entire length of their acquaintance, and the other members of the Skitter resistance had unquestioningly followed the alien's lead in using Ben — and by extension him — as their primary liaisons with the human fighters ever since. But more recent revelations had made it clear that that hadn't been his _only_ purpose in favoring Tom Mason.

"Well. Sounds like I ought to talk to him, then. Where can I meet him?"

"Out near the perimeter? He's willing to leave the bunker, but he won't come underground; most of the new recruits still feel fairly uncomfortable around this many humans," Ben grimaced.

Tom sighed and rubbed a hand over his beard. He'd been planning to spend some more time at Alexis' bedside; but he'd kick himself later if he put this off and something happened that could have been averted if only he'd taken the time to communicate. That kind of thing had bit him on the ass one too many times already.

"All right. Let him know I'd like to meet this evening, if possible; and that I may bring Colonel Weaver with me. I'm going to go check on your sister again; you can find me there when you get back."

The relief on Ben's face told him he'd made the right decision. "Thanks, Dad. And — can I tell them about the plan to take down one of the fences? They're just as anxious to strike a blow again as we are."

Tom worried his lower lip, considering that; from a strictly op-sec point of view, it was probably a bad idea, and if John had been there he'd have raked Tom over the coals for even considering it. What if one of the rebel Skitters ended up captured before the attack and interrogated by an Espheni? But there came a time when secrecy hurt more than it helped. "Yeah, go ahead. We may need them to come up with strategies to deal with the transformed Skitters, whatever the Espheni might have done to them, when we liberate Charlotte."

Ben's smile was a hopeful thing as he left: at harmony between his human side, and his alien allegiance.

Tom only hoped — now that some answers might finally be on the horizon — that whatever Red Eye had done to him wouldn't damage his _own_ allegiances. John had taken it surprisingly well, and Anne and Dr. Kadar were more fixated on what it meant for Alexis, but when it came out, _if_ it came out, to the rest of Charleston ...

He shook his head, then got up to pour himself a glass of scotch. He was still adjusting to the new definition of 'normal', with its ever-changing and ever-weirder permutations, and he suspected it would take a lot longer before he was completely at ease with it. How could he expect more of anyone else?

But on the other hand — "Worry does not empty tomorrow of its sorrow. It empties today of its strength," Tom murmured, reflecting on the fortitude of a woman who had saved many lives in Nazi Germany before surviving a concentration camp herself. Then he put the glass on his desk, told the sentry to send someone to tell Dan where he'd be, and headed for the infirmary.

* * *

They'd finished running Lexie's blood through the machines by the time Tom arrived back at her bedside; she still looked pale and wan lying tucked into clean, worn sheets, but her face showed the serenity of true sleep, not tense, drugged unconsciousness. Anne gave him a tight smile as he entered from her chair on one side of the bed; Tom took the other, lowering himself to a seat and then reaching to clasp his daughter's lax hand.

He'd known Alexis so little time, and she was already on the cusp of becoming a woman. They'd skipped right past the infant stages and accelerated so swiftly through the early years of play and discovering the world that it felt almost as if they'd leaped from birth to teenagerhood in one long step. But if this worked ...

"How is she?" he asked, quietly.

"So far, so good," Anne replied, reaching to tuck a lock of long dark hair behind Alexis' ear. "It may be a little while before we know whether the procedure was fully effective, given that she had no symptoms outside of the growth spurts before, but we'll test her blood again in a couple of days and compare the levels of Espheni proteins to what we saw in Roger's previous tests. Best case, she never has another growth-spurt episode; worst case, the next one is delayed by weeks or months."

"Either way, it'll give her more time to grow into herself and her gifts," Tom said, then looked up and met Anne's gaze. "As for what those gifts might be — Ben says one of the rebel Skitters brought in in the last few days was in Boston, and had some insights on what Karen wanted with me — and with Alexis. He asked to meet with me later. I don't know how much he knows, or if he really does know anything, but I thought you'd want to be aware."

"You'll tell me what he says?" Anne stiffened in her seat.

Tom nodded. "Yes; of course. Like I said before, you're her mother, and even if you weren't, I'd still want your advice. I can talk to Doc Sumner if I need technical details on a medical topic, or Dr. Kadar for mechanics, but when I need advice about the human side of the equation, you're still my first stop."

She nodded tightly, then frowned more deeply. "And you're sure you can trust whatever he does tell you?"

It seemed a little late in the game to ask that question. "The rebel Skitters have always proven to be our allies in every other area, and until we know more about Red Eye's intentions we can't hold his personal project against them in general. The only time their intel or assistance failed us was when Karen deliberately leaked false information about you and Alexis to bait me into a trap," he reminded her. "We have no reason not to trust him."

Anne waved a hand in front of her in a negating motion. "I don't mean whether or not he'll tell you what he _thinks_ is the truth. I mean, what if all he knows are the same lies that Karen was feeding Lexie?"

That made more sense; and it had been a worry for him, too. But failing to ask the question for fear they already knew the answer was a self-defeating proposition. "We cross that bridge when we come to it," he shrugged. "Or build our own deck to get over it, if we have to. Like every other crisis we've faced since the Second Mass decided to keep fighting even after the rest of the Boston militias fell."

"I suppose you're right," she said, smiling reluctantly again. "Even if the information doesn't turn out to be useful — at least we'll _know_ that avenue's closed to us."

"Right," he nodded, then chuckled dryly. "You know, the first time Red Eye came to us — a _Skitter_ wanting our help? The only thing I could think was that it _didn't actually matter_ whether or not he was telling the truth. Either way, I could only see our situation getting worse, at least in the short term. What mattered in the end was that just being able to ask the question opened options to us that we hadn't had before. That's why I really balked at Dan's order to blow him away, not because I actually believed him then."

Anne shook her head, still smiling faintly. "That incident didn't really help your stock with those who were convinced you came back tainted from your time on the Espheni ship, you know."

"I know. I knew even then. And hey, it actually turned out to be true, so it's not like I can hold it against him. _Them_ ," Tom corrected himself. John hadn't been the only one upset about it; just the most vocal.

"So that's how you do it," Anne blurted, cocking her head to one side.

"Do what?"

"Rationalize all the things he said before — the insults, the accusations, the arguments — with what you are to each other now," she said, in the tone of one having a revelation. "What you said the other day, about knowing what's under the surface, and not having to lie to him ... this is part of that. It's not that you've forgiven him for it, and expect him to do better; it's that you don't hold it against him in the first place."

"I can't — not and live with some of the things _I've_ said and done since this all started." He shook his head, trying to find the words to explain. "Humanity's enough of an endangered species as it is; there's no point letting the petty things divide us when there's so much else ready and waiting to trip us up. Not necessarily giving each other a pass — but putting it behind us, looking ahead instead of behind. We're stronger together."

"Ah." Anne looked down at their daughter, then up at him, picking up on the subtext there, too. "Point taken. Not so easy to stop feeling defensive of our choices, though, is it?"

"No; but I think it's worth the effort to try," Tom replied, quietly.

She cleared her throat then and sat up straighter, tossing her hair back over her shoulder, and adopted a pleasant, unworried expression: a window on happier times. "So. You're out of work early," she said brightly, as if she'd just caught sight of him.

Tom gave her a crooked smile, recognizing what she was doing. "Tough day," he said. "But I got the office work out of the way early. Might actually be picking up a new widget account soon."

"Oh, do tell," Anne prompted him, with the unshadowed easiness of the days when they had first gotten to know each other, before the potential of more had built into active interest.

So he told her: the basic details about Charlotte, about John's meeting up with the survivors of Hathaway's party, and about Dan's apparent connection to the soon-to-arrive Captain Marshall.

"That _definitely_ bears further investigation," she said, teasingly. "Have you warned him yet? Or better yet — Marina?"

He gave a rusty chuckle. "Not yet. I thought I'd ask him to go with me to meet the Skitter, and fill him in on everything then. But ..."

He trailed off as the hand still clutched in his moved suddenly, fingers twitching inward toward the palm, followed by a faint noise of discomfort as Alexis' brow wrinkled.

"Hey, she's waking up," he said, leaning over the bed. "Lexie? Sweetheart?"

Alexis' eyes blinked open, dark like her mother's and a little muzzy with sleep. "Dad? You're here," she said, a luminous smile forming as she looked up at him.

"Of course I am," he said, squeezing her hand again, then nodded toward Anne. "And so's your mother."

Alexis' eyes shifted toward Anne, and her smile widened. "Mom," she said, squeezing the hand Anne held. "You're _both_ here."

"Of course we are, Lexie. How are you feeling?" Anne beamed down at her.

"I'm glad. I like it better when everyone is family," she replied contentedly, then frowned a little and tugged her hands free of her parents' grip. She lifted them in front of her face, turning them over front to back, then flexed them and reached up toward the light overhead. For just a second, it almost looked as though her palms were glittering, reflecting the light like a mirror; then they were only skin again, and her expression of concentration lapsed. "I feel kind of achy? But I can hear it more clearly, now. It's nice."

"Hear ... it?" Tom said, glancing up to meet gazes with Anne. He tried not to let the sudden sense of alarm he felt infect his voice; Lexie was good at picking up the emotional states of the people around her from the tiniest cues, and he didn't want to upset her if it was something innocuous. "What do you hear, Lexie?"

She blinked, then lowered her arms and turned toward him again, eyes still looking a little dazed. "The song of the cosmos," she said, matter-of-factly. "Dr. Roger says everything in the universe vibrates at its own frequency. That's why glass can break if you sing at just the right note."

He nodded; destructive resonance was a concept he was familiar with, though he'd been much older than she seemed now when he'd learned about it. "Or that story about the collapse of the Broughton Suspension Bridge in 1831. They say it was caused by soldiers who were fascinated by the way it vibrated as they marched, and deliberately started stomping harder in rhythm to a marching tune."

She blinked slowly and looked up at the light again, spreading one hand against its glow. Foxfire glinted along the edges of her fingers, more noticeable this time, and she moved them back and forth as though playing the keys on a piano. "It really is like music. I can hear the frequencies, sometimes. They're so beautiful."

Anne swallowed hard, then spoke, keeping her voice soft. "You're hearing the light?"

"It always chimes when I touch it," Lexie agreed wistfully, still staring up at her waving fingers. "Every source sings a slightly different note."

Tom cleared his throat, reaching for something to say. "You should try moonlight, sometime. I know you don't see the night sky much down here. But it's — it's kind of a thing, with your brothers and I."

"Okay," she replied, then stretched her jaw wide in a massive yawn and turned slightly on the bed, curling up in a ball the way she usually did in Matt's lap. Within seconds, she was out again, breath fluttering shallowly against the pillow case.

Slowly, quietly, Tom got up from his chair and walked away from the bed, pressing a fist against his mouth.

Anne followed him, just far enough to be fairly sure Lexie wouldn't hear whatever they were saying. "I know she talks science with Roger sometimes — but this is a wrinkle I hadn't heard before," she murmured.

"It's a surprise to me, too," Tom replied, shaking his head as turned to look at her. "Like something out of a science fiction novel. Things like telekinesis, picking up on other people's emotions — it's _strange_ , it's unusual, but there _is_ precedent for it, in that there have been secret programs in various governments experimenting with documenting and reproducing those skills for _decades_. But the ability to hear vibrational frequencies, and even _resonate_ with them, if that was what she was doing just now ..." He took a deep, calming breath, then let it out again. "It's the clearest sign yet that whatever Red Eye's reasoning might have been, Karen _definitely_ intended to use her as a weapon."

"Tom, we're living in an _alien apocalypse_ ," Anne threw up her hands. "There's no precedent for _anything_ that's happened in the last few years. But one thing I do know — this extra sense she has, this ability to hear 'frequencies', can't be something that's normal for the Espheni. The war would've gone far differently if it was. Maybe that's how Red Eye broke free from the control of the harness to begin with, if his origin species had these unusual powers; maybe more of the rebels have that kind of genetic background, or maybe he worked out a way to gift the capability to resist to other Skitters as well."

"Hopefully the Skitter I'm meeting with tonight will be able to confirm or deny at least some of these questions," he shook his head, taking a few restless steps away, then back as something else occurred to him. "If Red Eye made these changes to all of my DNA, and not just my gametes — I know she expresses it more strongly, but it's obviously not just because of the Espheni growth matrix if she's hearing frequencies more clearly with it out of her system. So why haven't _I_ been hearing anything unusual, or throwing objects around the room with my mind when I have a nightmare?"

Anne bit her lip, then reached out to put a hand on his arm. "I actually might have an idea about that. A child's brain is far more flexible and open to novel input than an adult's. Alexis has been growing into her gifts, if at an accelerated rate; using them is actually changing the physical structure of her brain as her body ages."

"Right; I actually figured that was why they made the changes through a parent rather than directly — to grow children whose alterations were naturally a part of them, rather than modifying them afterward," he nodded. "Malleability; it's not something adults really have. So I could understand if the effects on me were just — weaker. But shouldn't there be _something_?"

She shook her head. "Maybe you _are_ perceiving the same things Lexie is, you just don't know it. Your brain could be filtering them through some other sensory channel that you're already accustomed to. It's impossible to say."

Tom's first impulse was to deny that idea — he'd known something was wrong when he'd had the eyebug, hadn't he? But afterward he'd felt completely back to normal ...

...But how _had_ he known about the eyebug? Neither Lourdes nor Hal had had a clue that they'd been infested. And he relied so much on instinct and seat-of-the-pants knowledge when events got rough, how would he _know_ if he was acting on some scrap of information he'd somehow pulled out of the aether?

"I don't know whether to hope you're right, or be horrified," he said, huffing a disbelieving laugh. "Not that that's really anything new, I suppose. At least it's not on one of my children's behalf, for once. I worry a little more than is probably healthy about Matt — he's the only one of them not yet scarred in some way by this war."

"Wounds of the spirit still count," Anne admonished him, softly. "But he _is_ remarkably resilient — and I think having Lexie around has helped him, too. Every time I watch them together, I wonder what it might have been like if Sammy had survived; if he'd have been as close a big brother, or if they'd have squabbled like Hal and Ben."

"So many children lost," Tom shook his head. "I haven't yet scraped up the courage to ask the Volm if they have any numbers on how many humans are still alive — and of those, how many are under twenty. Just from our observations, it seems like the Espheni could hardly have done more damage if they'd been _trying_ to exterminate us ..."

He trailed off there, seized by a sudden, terrible conviction; the same feeling that had struck him when he'd been lost in the woods with John, contemplating the med pack Lourdes had put together for their trip.

...Was _that_ a nudge from the cosmos? Had the revelation a month ago been, too?

"...Tom? Is something wrong?" Anne frowned at him.

"I ... something just occurred to me that I'm going to have to think about," he said managed to say, shaken.

All the assumptions he'd made about the war — all the assumptions _everyone_ had made about the alien invasion and ongoing occupation — had been based on the idea that the Espheni had come to earth for material reasons; that they were seeking some resource, be it rare minerals to send back home, land to plant a colony on, or even simply water. Deny them that resource, make it cost more to take than it was worth to keep transiting Earth's gravity well, and surely they'd have to pack up and leave.

But they hadn't. And showed no signs of wanting to do so. Either humanity's efforts to fight back were just that pathetic, whatever resource they were there for was just that valuable ... or it wasn't actually a resource they were after, at all. And of course, he'd known about the side effects of the defense grid. What if _that_ had been its main purpose, and keeping out the Volm just a useful side effect? But even if that was true — _why_?

"Well, then, get back to me when you've figured it out; it looks like your escort is here," she replied, tipping her head toward the doors.

Tom looked, and saw Dan following Ben in, both deeply involved in some low-voiced, frown worthy conversation. Matt trailed in their wake, carrying a book in his arms, but passed them when they paused just past the entry, headed for Lexie's corner.

"Later, then," he nodded to Anne. "Thank you, by the way."

"For what?" she wrinkled her brow at him.

Tom quirked a smile back, shaking his head. "For being here," he said. Then he turned and headed for the doors.

Dan and Ben stepped out into the hall with him, exchanging the usual handclasps and greetings. Then Dan cleared his throat and got to the point. "So Ben tells me we have a new guest who spent some time at that tower up in Boston?"

"Mm-hmm. I have a few questions for him, and thought you might want to be there."

Dan shook his head. "I thought we were done with that place when we came south; and doubly so since your little trip up there with Pope and Karen. But I guess a man never does quite leave his home behind."

"It all does keep coming back there," Tom agreed, regretfully. "Sometimes I wonder what would've happened if I'd never got on the ship with Karen, that day."

Dan snorted, giving him an exasperated look. "You been beating yourself up over that? Don't kid yourself, Tom; she'd have killed us both and gone after Hal anyway."

Tom blinked at his matter-of-fact appraisal, then gave the man a crooked smile. Trust Dan to see the concrete aspect of the situation first ... and blow right past all the guilty questions and what-if's Tom had been torturing himself with. "You're probably right. He ready for us, Ben?"

Ben nodded. "Up near the perimeter, but inside it, don't worry; I already confirmed that for Colonel Weaver. And he agreed to let a couple of First Continental patrol officers wait just outside the park; apparently, they aren't usually as hostile as the Second Mass irregulars."

Tom could almost hear John's voice in his ear, then, drawling an unamused _imagine that_. The First Continental had spent almost the entirety of the war underground, hating the aliens more in principle than in fact. He didn't think the way they reacted now necessarily reflected badly on either group; each of them had been shaped by their experiences into what they needed to survive, and the habits of survival were hard to break.

"Well, let's go, then. I have a few things to tell you both before we meet with him, about a few things I left out when we shared the news about Dr. Kadar's latest tests ..."

* * *

Dan stopped him with a hand to his shoulder just before they reached the postage-stamp sized, reclaimed park where the Skitter waited. It was a calm green space, fenced in with nearly whole brick walls and kept free of dust and more obvious weeds by the public works committee; it made an excellent place to talk in private. "Go on ahead, son; we'll be right there."

"Dad?" Ben hesitated, frowning back at them.

"Go on; we'll be right behind you," Tom nodded.

Ben glanced between them with a skeptical _the adults are being adults again_ expression, but nodded gamely. "All right; just don't wait long. He's a little spooked."

Dan watched until he nodded to the sentries and disappeared through the gap in the walls, then frowned at Tom. "As much as that story sheds light on a few of your more mercurial moods of late ... that still ain't all of it, is it?" he asked.

"You do realize Ben can probably still hear us?" Tom deflected, lifting his eyebrows. It wasn't as though he had any proof yet; anything more than a vague and ominous hunch that he couldn't even be sure was meaningful.

"Probably and certainly aren't the same thing, and I've had discussions with him about this before; he knows when not to pay attention," Dan snorted, tone faintly chastising. "Your boys may all be as stubborn and reckless with their own lives as you are, but they also understand responsibility; Ben's no exception there."

"I know, I know, it's just ..." Tom waved that away. "Never mind. No, it isn't everything; but what's left is ... more speculation and feeling than fact."

"Well, you fill me in the minute it becomes more than speculation, all right? Or I'll tell Pope you've been trying to carry the whole city's burdens on your back again. Stubborn and reckless." Dan shook his head.

"It would almost be worth it to see the look on his face when he realizes you've turned to him as an ally in managing me," he replied, wryly. "But don't worry; I'll let you know. It's — to do with the Espheni motivation for the war; not anything immediately actionable. Just — significant."

"I get it," Dan nodded, then gestured after Ben. "All right, then."

"All right."

The Skitter waiting with Ben looked no different to Tom's eye than most of the others he'd met; apart from Red Eye, who'd had the distinctive scar and resulting ocular damage to differentiate him from the rest of his species, he had trouble telling them apart by looks. Personalities were easier, even filtered through Ben and Denny; they each had recognizable attitudes and phrasing. Though — even that was a peculiarity of the rebels, really; most of the Skitters he'd had the displeasure of fighting _against_ over the course of the war had seemed aggressive, fatalistic, and universally more concerned with whatever their Overlord had set them to do than their personal wellbeing. As if they were little more than trained beasts, all bred and raised in the same mold.

If they did all manage to survive the war, and the rebel Skitters were left behind — and he didn't kid himself they wouldn't be; the Volm didn't seem likely to take them, the Espheni certainly wouldn't, and as slaves they had no possessions or home of their own — he'd have to spend more time with them, train his eye to their differences. Assess them as individuals, the way any sophont deserved. But for now, the fact of their wrinkled, leathery, greenish-brown skin, the six legs each ending in a tripod-like foot, the tri-fingered hands, the almost insectile mouth and backswept skull above unsettling dark eyes — it was hard not to look at them and just see _alien_.

Tom cleared his throat and nodded to the Skitter in greeting. "Good evening. Thank you for meeting with me. Ben says you have information I'd be interested in?"

The spikes on the back of Ben's neck activated with their usual bright blue glow, and his expression blanked as the alien spoke through him. "Greetings, Professor Mason," the Skitter said, using the title most of his kind still defaulted to with him. "I have information that may prove useful to you, yes; though I am not familiar enough with humans to gauge the level of your interest."

"Trust me, I'm interested," Tom replied, dryly. "You were at the tower in Boston?"

"Yes. As an assistant assigned to biomechanical engineering processes. I helped modify the parasitical devices known to you as _eyebugs_ to work with human physiology, and worked on the second of two genetic editing packages intended for individual humans."

Hearing it stated that baldly was like a splash of ice water to the face. Tom swallowed hard. "The second one — that would be Karen's. The infection that made Alexis mature so quickly," he guessed.

The Skitter inclined its head. "Yes. I had no hand in the first, unfortunately, other than knowing the fact of its existence, and the criteria upon which it was meant to be applied."

"...Criteria?" Dan said, sounding highly skeptical. "Could you elaborate on what those criteria happen to be?"

"They have been the same on each planet since the birthworld of our race was destroyed, so long ago. I know them well, though few thought it possible they should ever be met. But you have done so; the Harbinger of the Last Mothers has arrived among us at last." The Skitter inclined his head again, more deeply than the first time.

The word 'criteria' had suggested there was a reason he'd picked Tom beyond mere convenience and attitude — but he couldn't say he'd been expecting anything like what the Skitter had just come out with. Now it seemed naïve that he'd only considered lying or mistaken information as possible complications to this meeting.

"...Harbinger?" he frowned. He wasn't sure he liked the sound of that. "What do you mean by Last Mothers?"

The Skitter ignored the second question entirely, replying instead with a list of what had to be the criteria. "The Harbinger must be an unharnessed sentient being; one capable of commanding the allegiance of its own species; one able to resist the pressure of an Espheni's presence on the shadow plane; one who will not give up before the task is complete. One who is willing to negotiate even with the most foreign of entities, but who also knows when negotiation must bow to necessity."

Tom shared an alarmed glance with Dan. He'd ranted to John once that the red-eyed Skitter chose him because he was _uncivilized_ ; because he didn't give up, and because he fought back even in a futile situation. But this list felt enough like truth to resonate in the same place behind his breastbone where his dread about the Espheni's purpose on Earth took root. "So it was never really about Alexis, or the possibility of a child like her?"

The Skitter made a casting-away gesture with one triply-clawed hand. "The hybrid has the potential to be a bridge between that which cannot be rebuilt and that which must not be destroyed; a fulcrum point, with the ability to bring prosperity and peace, if your species will accept it. But her power is only a fraction of the Last Mothers'. And when they come, they will need a voice through which to speak."

Tom swallowed hard as it sank in what was really going on: not the scientific horrors he'd been half-expecting when Ben asked him for this meeting, but _religion_. A _Skitter_ religion. One he'd never had a clue existed — if he'd even thought they _had_ the capacity for something like religion.

"Who are the Last Mothers?" he repeated, clenching his hands at his sides. "Are they from your homeworld?"

The Skitter ducked his head again, Ben's voice sounding increasingly agitated as he replied. "I have no homeworld. No species beyond what you see. He who kept the memory of the Last Mothers was one of the last of those altered by the first generation of harnesses. The one you call Karen took her inspiration for what was done to the hybrid from the method the Espheni use to fill out the ranks of their guards when depleted. And they spend less and less time on training them since human children have proved ... difficult."

Cognitive dissonance: that was the word for what Tom was feeling. It was rather like being slapped hard with a wet halibut. No wonder it had taken so long for a Skitter rebellion to build, if the majority of them quite literally couldn't even imagine any other life, speed-grown by a species that habitually used biological and chemical agents to override the will of those they conquered.

"Why tell me now? Why tell me at all?" Clearly Red Eye had never intended to.

The Skitter's mandibles worked restlessly. "She comes. She _comes_ ," he said, then turned abruptly away and moved rapidly toward the former Volm compound on six swift-moving legs.

Ben gasped as the spikes on his neck stopped glowing and bent over, bracing his hands on his thighs.

"Wait, you can't just —" Tom started to call after the Skitter, then stepped forward to grasp his son's shoulder. "Ben, are you all right?"

Ben took a few deep breaths, then nodded his head and straightened up again, giving Tom a troubled look. "He didn't want to answer any more questions — but he was bleeding all over the place mentally; I couldn't help hearing it. He's worried because too many things have gone wrong, and Red Eye was the last one who knew the whole plan, whatever it is. He doesn't know if the knowledge still exists to create another Harbinger if you die — and because of the way the Espheni are tied to all the Skitters through this shadow plane he mentioned, _they_ can't modify themselves to speak with these Last Mothers when they arrive."

"Jesus," Tom swore automatically — then winced at the inadvertently topical comment as Dan chuckled in disbelief.

"More like John the Baptist," Dan shook his head. "Prophet for some alien Messiahs. And I thought this war couldn't get any more disturbing. What happens when you don't fulfill this Skitter prophecy?"

"I guess on the one hand, it's reassuring that even creatures from beyond our solar system have a system of faith. But on the other — can we really assume there isn't some kind of concrete reality behind it?" He sat down on a nearby bench, dizzied by the concept. If that was true — and what occurred to him earlier was _also_ true, then ...

 _Then what, Mason? Going to let a little woo-woo Skitter philosophy throw you off your game?_ Tom could easily imagine John's reply. It wasn't as if even this materially changed what they had to do next, did it?

...No; but it might very well affect how they treated with the rebel Skitters. And that, he couldn't just blow off.

"Cochise," Ben blurted, perking up a little. "The Volm should know something, shouldn't they? If there's any substance to it? At least, what the original Skitters were — if it's possible Red Eye really was from that time. What their race was called. If they had powers like Lexie. There's gotta be _something_."

"Maybe. He says the Volm studied our history — if they know all that crap about us, they gotta know the history of the war their own people have been fighting all this time," Dan agreed absently, a glint in his eye as he stared at Tom.

Tom knew what that was about. He sighed, and nodded to his son again. "Thanks for the insight — and the suggestion. If Cochise does have any information, I'll let you know — but otherwise, I don't think I need to tell you to keep tonight's conversation to yourself?"

Ben opened his mouth to agree, then paused; and Tom mentally slapped himself. "And Denny, of course," he added, "since she's in the middle of all this as well. I think we can trust her to understand that we don't need to panic the people of Charleston before we have any real idea of what it means."

Ben winced. "Actually — yeah, that would be great, and I know she'll agree — but I was actually gonna ask, am I supposed to keep this from Hal, too? Then he might tell Maggie — and what about your —?" He coughed the word 'boyfriend' loudly into his hand.

"I think that question will become a little more relevant when the three of them are actually back in the city," Tom gave him an unimpressed look. "And you can refer to John however you like. Just so long as it's respectful."

Ben gave him a _very_ skeptical look in return, drawing it out just long enough to make his point, then nodded. "Yeah, all right. He's been better anyway, lately. Kinda badass when he's not being cruel."

"I'm sure he'd be pleased to hear that," Tom gave him a tired smile. "Speaking of which. I should probably ask. Are _you_ okay with all this?"

"The dad with alien DNA asks the son with a _different_ alien's DNA?" Ben replied, very dryly. "Sure, it's weird. But it's still less weird to me than your thing with Pope, if you want the truth."

Tom chuckled ruefully and clapped him on the shoulder. "He said almost the exact same thing, believe it or not."

Ben scoffed, but looked mollified at that.

"Now, if you wanted to go back to check on your sister," Tom changed the subject, "she was awake for a few moments before we came out here — I'm sure she'd be happy to see you."

"She's okay?" Ben asked, perking up immediately. "Then it worked?"

"Anne thinks so," Tom nodded. "But we'll know for sure in a few days. Now go on; shoo."

Ben darted over to give him a quick hug, then nodded respectfully to Dan and headed back out for the stairs down into the mall.

Tom looked over at Dan, then, and sighed. "I'm not doing anything else tonight without a glass in my hand," he declared. He wouldn't risk drinking alone in his current mood, but he had a feeling Dan wanted to vent a little, too. "Want to go brave the Nest, or raid Manchester's scotch again? I don't much care which."

Dan tugged off his ever-present ball cap and ran a hand over his hair, considering. "Better make it the scotch. But let's stop by Popetown first, get one for the road. Press a little flesh. I could do with a little human rowdiness to balance out all the alien melodrama, how about you?"

He extended his hand as he spoke; Tom grabbed it and levered himself back up off the bench. "I think that sounds like just what the doctor ordered. Oh, and while we're there ... maybe you can give me the rundown on an army officer by the name of Katie Marshall? Turns out she was with Hathaway's people."

Dan sputtered, but his mood immediately shifted at the distraction, and he led the way out of the walled park with a renewed energy in his step.

Tom followed, determined not to think about anything else to do with grand destinies or the fate of the war for the rest of the night.

* * *

He began the next morning with a nagging hangover, squinting over the engineers' reports on the crashed Beamers. It turned out they had battery analogues but no fuel reservoirs, so they had to have been retooled for energy sharing, just like the fencepost. How exactly that worked, they hadn't figured out yet; another headscratcher to deal with later. Then he fielded another community meeting, letting everyone know about the incoming group, breaking the news about the fences and stressing that they had a plan for dealing with them, and finally renewing Anne's call for blood donations in preparation for taking in more refugees.

It wasn't until around lunchtime that he had a chance to glance over the inventories from the supply mission that had revisited Columbia and Winnsboro behind John's scouting party. Their contents were mostly the kind of mind-numbing necessary minutia that kept Charleston growing, from diesel to linens to dry goods to surplus clothes of all sizes ... apart from a few jars of pickled okra, of all things, and a note attached to a deflated football earmarked for Matt Mason.

Tom passed the football on, bemused, and kept the note. Matt's hobbies in recent weeks had consisted mostly of his nascent book club with Tanya and Alexis and his weapons practice, but he brightened right up at the sight of the ball and disappeared for several hours with his few age-mates among the militia families. It was good to see him behaving like a kid, even if the other boys weren't what Tom would call the best influences — or to be more accurate, were the sort of friends that brought out the bad influence in Matt. An afternoon spent at obstacle-course tackle football among the topside ruins seemed like a much more productive use of their time than blowing up windows in abandoned houses with sticks of dynamite.

Tom kept a jar of the okra, too, ninety percent certain that John had done the same, and split it with Anne as he shared the bare bones of the Skitter's news. He'd promised, and she did deserve to know.

She wasn't best pleased to hear that the Skitters appeared to believe just as much in some grand destiny for Alexis as Karen had, but was determined not to let it affect Lexie's life. Whatever differences he'd had with Anne, she would always and forever be on Lexie's side first, and in this case that was definitely a good thing. Fortunately, Lexie continued to show no signs of a recurrence of the Espheni infection responsible for her rapid growth; most of the time she seemed like just any other thirteen year old girl, if a little on the serious side.

Talking to Cochise ... did not go quite as well. If one defined 'well' as 'conducive to Tom Mason's peace of mind.'

"The species that the Espheni enslaved and mutated into the first Skitters, many generations ago, has been extinct in their original form for hundreds of years," the Volm said over the comm that afternoon, in answer to Tom's first question.

"Right. But could any of those — the ones turned into Skitters — still be alive today?" he tried again.

"It is ... possible, given the capabilities of Espheni biotechnology," Cochise conceded. "But extremely unlikely. Why do you ask?"

"Just bear with me a minute. Are you _sure_ the original species, the — whatever they were called —"

"The Dorniya," Cochise filled in.

"The Dorniya; are you absolutely _sure_ they're all extinct, or is this another 'extremely unlikely' situation?" he pressed, drumming his fingers on his office desk.

"That _is_ what we were always taught," Cochise replied. "Have you seen evidence of another alien presence on Earth?"

Tom snorted ruefully at that answer. "Depends on how you define it, I suppose," he deflected by way of reply. "One of the rebel Skitters who recently turned up in Charleston mentioned a belief that beings he called 'the Last Mothers' were on their way to Earth."

"How did he obtain this intelligence?" Cochise asked, suspiciously.

"Not intel: _belief_. As in 'the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen'. I'm trying to get some kind of handle on how much of what he told me is based on fact, and how much is just wishful thinking."

Cochise muttered something low in his own language. Dr. Kadar had told Tom once that Volm was a very orderly, practical tongue; he had yet to find the time to try to pick any of it up, but cursing was about the most practical use of a language there was, and he recognized the stunned tone of a 'what the fuck' when he heard it.

"Yeah, that was about my reaction, too. But if there's any truth to it ..."

"That seems ... unlikely. The destruction of their species occurred before the Volm were drawn into the war, so there is little detail in our histories, but there _is_ enough to be reasonably certain of their fate. The Dorniya were not the first race conquered by the Espheni — the available evidence suggests they have been enslaving planets across multiple galaxies for approximately fifteen of your centuries — but that world _does_ appear to be the first the Espheni razed completely. Not one stone was left upon another, and the biosphere was completely eradicated, likely by a defense grid similar to the one that was activated here. For any of the Dorniya to have survived unchanged, they must have been off-planet before the conquest began."

"And you don't think that's likely?" He'd never given much thought to what might've happened to any astronauts up on the International Space Station when the Espheni arrived; they were undoubtedly long dead, if their electronics had been fried along with every other piece of advanced circuitry on Earth, but what if they'd been a little better equipped?

"Unfortunately, no; while their civilization was more advanced than Earth, they turned their technological mastery inward, rather than toward the stars. It is a matter of some speculation among Volm scientists whether the biotechnology used to create the first chemlocks was, in fact, a corruption of processes invented by the Dorniya themselves."

That was a horrifying thought; very Borg of them. ' _We will add your biological and technological distinctiveness to our own. Your culture will adapt to service us_.' He'd been in college, rooming with a Star Trek fan, during the epic Picard transformation cliffhanger; it had made an impression. It figured that the darker side of Rodenberry's wagon train to the stars would turn out to be the more prophetic.

"...You said _multiple_ galaxies," he said slowly, playing that analogy out. "Just how _many_ worlds have the Espheni overrun?"

There was a quiet pause on the other end; then Cochise said, "Ask instead how many worlds the Volm have freed; for they are as individual leaves on a vast tree."

Tom contemplated that image for a moment, and suddenly found Cochise's father's attitude a little easier to understand. So many worlds. So few of which successfully fought back, that the Volm hadn't known what to do with humanity's intransigence. Even if the Last Mothers were real, living Dorniya, how could they possibly make a difference on that scale?

He shook his head. Faith wasn't his business; his business was hope — if not for himself, then for others. And what difference would knowing any of this make to the average citizen of Charleston?

About as much difference, probably, as Cochise knowing the true reason he'd asked about the Dorniya. The Volm didn't need to know what Red Eye had actually done; if the knowledge spread, it could easily do more damage than good.

"That's ... a frightening thought," he replied.

"Yes. I find it is best not to think of it too often," Cochise said. "I am afraid the Skitter that spoke to you must have been ... mistaken."

"Right," Tom said, clearing his throat. "Right. Well, that's what I wanted to know. How goes _your_ search?"

"Not well," Cochise answered, mournfully. "We have concluded that the Espheni must have spent the weeks of their retreat completing a new power source to supplant their previous reliance on found materials, but its location remains elusive. They have hidden its signature well."

"Well, keep us posted, and we'll let you know if we hear anything. It was good to hear from you, my friend."

"You as well, Tom Mason," Cochise replied, then ended the connection.

Tom stared at the communicator for a long moment, reeling from the existential weight of the conversation. Then he dropped his face into his hands, took a long breath, and decided he'd better find a better way to deal with it than the method he'd chosen the night before. Planning the liberation of Charlotte, perhaps.

What would John say, if he were there? For once, Tom's imagination failed him. He couldn't wait until the rest of his family was back where they belonged.

He stood, stretched until his back popped, then picked up his rifle and headed out to find Dan.

-(5/10)-


	6. Carried Into Their Midst

_"The first to be overtaken were finished off, killed, and it wasn't just a few people who died. For those who didn't die the chase was carried into their very midst when the insects caught up with them [ ...]"_  
— Popul Vuh, Part Four

* * *

At a distance, from the top of a long green slope overlooking the city, under a pale blue sky marbled with cloud, Charleston almost looked ...

Well, as ugly as ever, to be honest: a vast and sprawling necropolis of shattered concrete and rotting iron, like the aftermath of every doomsday movie ever filmed. From up there, you couldn't even make out the fourteen or so blocks that the residents had painstakingly reclaimed; the string lights and candles lit it up a bit at night, but the shored-up buildings and partially-cleared streets were all blocked from view by broken skyscrapers and tumbledown warehouses. But hidden in the heart of that slowly reviving wreckage, a little chunk of civilization bore John's name; and tucked away under the city, snug as bugs in a rug, were a few people who might actually give a damn if he hadn't come back from this mission.

He had a _home_ , for the first time in longer than he cared to remember. And that made him want to use all kinds of sentimental terms to describe it. There hadn't been much metaphorical beauty in his life, until now.

It also made him a little reckless. But then, when had he ever hesitated to stick his neck out to an authority figure in the name of pointing out the bluntly obvious?

John glanced over to the pair of women who'd accompanied him to the top of the hill, absently scratching at his bandaged wrist. "Home, sweet home. It may not look like much from up here, but as Lieutenant Fisher probably told you, there's a lot going on under the surface. We've even expanded some since she was here last; total population's up north of five thousand now. Not sure the exact number, since our scouting parties keep bringing in scattered survivors, like Sara back there." He nodded over his shoulder toward the rest of their entourage, down the backside of the hill.

There was a bittersweet smile on Fisher's face as she stared down at the wrecked city; remembering the time she'd spent sniping from the ruins, then being blown up, captured, and subsequently convinced that everything she'd believed to be true was wrong, he figured. Marshall, though, with her carefully styled short hair, commanding voice, and apparent distaste for all things John Pope, wore a much more calculating look.

"It is a very ... informative ... view," Marshall said, inclining her head to him. "But why are we up here, and not already crossing the bridge?"

"Just one more thing I wanted to explain before we head on in," he said, meeting gazes with her. She ran a tight ship with her crew, but he'd overheard a few worrisome conversations among her guys about 'managing' the civilian leadership that he wanted to head off at the pass.

Her forehead wrinkled a little, and she turned more squarely to face him. "Yes?" she replied, neutrally.

"I know it probably sounds quaint to you. Being as how you've been in contact with Hathaway since the beginning, and all. I know it sure did to the lieutenant," he began, nodding toward the killer in question.

The corner of Fisher's mouth quirked wryly, though there were pained lines around her eyes as she pointedly stayed out of the conversation; yeah, she knew where he was going with this.

"But to the people of Charleston, _Tom Mason_ is their President. Not their Governor, or whatever other polite fiction he may've dreamed up to make peace while Hathaway was in the city. Are they happy the old President survived? Sure they are. A lot of them voted for the guy. But do they give a damn in general about an administration whose first act in getting back in touch wasn't to try and communicate, find out what in the actual fuck was going on, but to _murder_ one of the people who'd been defending them? Not hardly," he snarled.

Fisher flinched, but she kept staring down over the city, hands linked behind her back.

"Captain Weaver ..." Marshall tried to speak up, frown deepening as she stared at him.

" _Colonel_ Weaver supports Mason one hundred percent. I know you've got a history with the man, but you start off by insulting his brother, that's not gonna end well for you. He's not even the highest-ranking officer in Charleston; that's General Porter, and he's also a friend of Weaver's from way back. Not to mention, he's the one who put Mason and Weaver together at the beginning of all this; they were founding members of the Massachusetts Militias together. So don't look to him when you take a look around, decide you don't like how we're interpreting the UCMJ and the Constitution and whatever the fuck else, and try to stick your oar in."

"Mr. Pope, I don't think I particularly appreciate your tone," she said mildly, arms crossed over her chest.

He hoped she let her hair down a little when she wasn't 'on duty', or Weaver was going to have a hell of a time running interference for the woman. John didn't think he'd realized just _how much_ Weaver had softened since the early days of the Second Mass until that moment; either his former protégée hadn't had the equivalent of a Mason at her elbow to wear down her defensive edges, or she was on worst behavior until they proved worthy of her respect. Either way, it wasn't going to fly with him.

"And just to run down the rest of the administration for you," he continued, full of malignant cheer. "Mason's VP is Marina Peralta; it's true, she was a senator's aide in the old days, and Fisher may've noticed she's still figuring out what's important and what's really, really not under end-of-the-world conditions. But she _likes_ Mason, and she's close to Weaver's daughter Jeanne, who runs the Public Works Committee. The chief of police — whenever they actually manage to hang the title on him — is gonna be Anthony, a longtime member of the Berserkers and also part of Mason's original scout team. The chief of the infirmary? The mother of Mason's daughter, also part of the Second Mass from day one, and not likely to be receptive to anyone trying to stab a friend in the back. Power and Light? BFFs with Mason's ex. The ambassador to the rebel Skitters? Mason's second son. Mason's eldest Hal, I believe you've met; he also has a voice in the cabinet. And don't forget the Volm; I don't think I need to elaborate on that point.

"Let me be perfectly clear," he concluded. "Even if the man _was_ some jumped-up academic mad for power who seized the opportunity to put all his cronies in positions of authority ... the people _love_ him. Tom Mason fights with them; he drinks with them; he made the deal with the Volm that actually let them show their faces above ground again; he helped rescue some of their lost children; he's the face they've seen championing their cause since day one. It's true you got fifty-plus troops here that've got no reason to be loyal to the man, and you might find some supporters in the First Continental who were here before we arrived. But I'd advise taking a good look around first. Or — _don't_. But don't be surprised at the results."

Marshall's expression had grown more thoughtful than hostile as he laid it all out for her. "I'll take your concerns under advisement," she finally said, archly. "If you'll tell me one thing."

"Lay it on me," he replied, spreading his arms wide.

She looked him up and down, then shook her head. "You listed a lot of other names. But you're the one standing there defending Tom Mason like it's your right. So what's _your_ position in the city?"

What was with strange women asking him that question? Shame there was no Maggie to run off at the mouth on his behalf that morning. He'd spent the last few days figuring out how to deal with the fact that Mason seemed determined to push right past the 'fuckbuddies' category to a full-on committed relationship; something John had never attempted with a man before, for damned good reasons. But he'd be a day late and a dollar short to try to equivocate now. And he'd just got done lecturing the woman about trying to uphold the old world's boundaries.

"Haven't you been paying attention?" he grinned toothily at her. "You're talking to the First Boyfriend."

That snagged Fisher's attention away from the view; she whipped her head around, staring at him. "That's ... not the impression I got when we flew to Keystone," she said, incredulously. "He called you the mechanic; and you said you didn't think you'd have much to contribute to any conversation with President Hathaway."

"Yeah, the boyfriend thing would be what you'd call a recent development," he drawled. "But don't take what you saw then for granted, either. I've always been Tom Mason's foil; his devil's advocate, his agent provocateur. His lifeline when he goes too far down the rabbit hole. The Scully to his Mulder, if you will. Because while he's a smart, pragmatic guy — he still _wants_ to believe in the inherent goodness of people. _I_ know better."

Marshall's expression cleared, and she nodded, slowly. "I see," she said, reflectively.

She didn't clarify what, or why, she saw; but John would take that as a win, for now. "All right, then," he said, gesturing back down to the milling troops.

Tector had been waiting at the bottom of the hill, rifle slung casually in his arms; he looked relieved as they came back down, nodding respectfully to John. "All good, Boss?" he said.

"Yup. Looks to be a clear day. Want to call it in, Junior?" he asked, fishing the communication device out of his pocket and holding it up as Hal strolled up to their little party.

Hal raised his hand, and John tossed it over. He'd have done it himself, but it made a better show this way, and it would improve Mason Mark II's mood; win win for John, even if he didn't get to hear Tom's voice.

That done, he rounded the rest of his people up and headed for their horses. He saw Marshall heading for the Humvees, as well — but to his surprise, he saw her beckon a second lieutenant named Wolf to join her, instead of Fisher as he'd expected. Her expression was friendlier than anything he'd seen out of her so far; maybe she really had been fronting with them as much as they'd been fronting with her? He'd keep an eye out regardless.

He checked his horse's girth, out of recently and awkwardly acquired habit; then he swung up into the saddle and made his way to the front of the pack, mind already far out in front of him.

 _Honey, I'm home_.

* * *

The big bridge leading into the city had been a wreck when the Second Mass had arrived the year before; it had been one of the first big public works projects of the Mason regime, after the Volm had set up their bunker and assigned a few of their number to help guard the city. The current bridge was a wood construction neither as wide nor as sturdy as the old-world rebar and concrete span, but it was more than adequate to support a typical scout group's load-out, as the Mega-mechs that had crossed it in the recent attack had used to their benefit. They might have to cut their losses and drop it if they had to field another attack the size of that one, but for now it was still intact, ready and waiting to usher them in.

Hal's conversation with his father seemed to have stirred the city like a kicked anthill; a sizeable party of folks were waiting at the other end, Mason at the front with Weaver at his side. From the length of the bridge, Weaver looked eager but apprehensive to John's practiced eye; arms crossed in front of him, squinting, rocking slightly on his feet. Tom, on the other hand, looked pale and as wrung out as an old dishrag; several times in the last few days he'd said he'd have a lot to tell John when he was back, and whatever it was must've been eating into his rack time. It looked like a little old-fashioned Pope-style distraction would be in order, that evening.

He grinned to himself as they started over the bridge, horse riders first followed by Marshall's Humvee with the rest of the vehicles and bikes strung out behind them in a long chain. "Hey Mason," he called loudly as the sound of hoofstrikes clopped out through the clear afternoon air. "Look what followed me home! Can we keep 'em?"

He could see Tom's mouth crease in a wide smile; and behind him, he could hear the Berserkers chuckling, over the rumble of the Humvee's engines.

Except ... there was something wrong with that sound; a distinct buzzing threaded through the usual motor noise. It wasn't like anything he'd heard before, and in this world, the unfamiliar was usually a threat. He swiveled abruptly in his saddle, looking behind them — and caught sight of the huge, dragonfly-winged _things_ just as they stooped to strike at someone on a bicycle toward the back of the group.

"Flying Skitters!" he shouted at the top of his lungs, grabbing for his rifle. "Take cover! Take cover!"

The unfortunate soldier screamed as the oversized hornet plucked him into the air and immediately banked away from the city, flying back in the direction the swarm had come from. A couple of rifles barked, including John's, but it was moving fast, and the majority of Marshall's soldiers not already safe inside a vehicle were dropping their bikes and scrambling to get out of the open, not taking the time to aim their weapons.

John shot at the next one, then dropped the rifle as his horse neighed and shied uneasily under him. He swore, then drew the Volm gun he'd kept with him as a good luck charm ever since his last involuntary visit to Boston and swung down from the saddle, slapping the horse on the rump. It darted immediately across the bridge, hopefully headed toward the stable; he heard a scared shout and a thump off to his right as Sara's horse apparently tried the same trick and dumped her to the planking. He couldn't look, though; a winged form darted down from the buzzing cloud directly at him, and he had to pump three shots into it before it fell, smoking, at his feet.

Up close, they were even uglier than in the air; mostly Skittery in the head and torso, but with an elongated tail and four wings in place of four of its legs. The remaining legs were undersized and tucked up against its body, and the pincer arms were weird-looking as well, chitinous and stiff; it made the thing look even more like an insect than Skitters did already. He swore loudly and kicked it in its grotesque face, then turned to find another target.

The other Berserkers appeared to have followed his lead and freed their horses, leaving them afoot; Lyle had handed his Volm-tech pistol off to Sara and was practically standing over her with his rifle as the rest of them porcupined up again, watching each other's backs and thinning the swarm with their usual accuracy. Two more of Marshall's folks went screaming off into the sky from the middle of the column, but Tec brought one of them back down; the soldier hollered again as he hit the ground, but it looked like he was still moving, so whatever he'd broken was probably worth it. Marshall herself, the two lieutenants he'd met, and a couple of sergeants had formed a fire line as well; everyone else was either taking potshots from inside their vehicles or forming up at the other end of the convoy under the direction of another lieutenant named Shelton.

John kept firing, as swiftly as his gun would recharge, scooting over to put his shoulder against Marshall's. It would be a waste to have brought her all that way and read her the riot act just to lose her to one of the goddamn Espheni prisons. That's what this had to be about; somehow the fishheads had figured out where the survivors of the last attack were going even after he'd shrouded the engines — maybe by some kind of evidence they'd left behind, maybe by logic — and were trying to collect the rest before they could reach the safe haven of Charleston.

He heard more shots ring out from the other end of the bridge; good, more of them than just Mason and Weaver had brought their weapons, even though they'd been expecting a friendly welcome. But — on the other hand, not good; were the hornets attacking the Charleston group opportunistically, or did they have another goal as well?

Another ugly corpse fell twitching at his feet — this one, shot by someone else while he'd been picking off a hornet stooping over the Berserkers — and he paused long enough to give Marshall an acknowledging nod. Then he saw her expression change, her gun lifting again just as something whipped around his chest, pinning his arms to his side with crushing force. He had just enough time to look down and see one of those long, ugly tails wrapped around him before he was jerked straight off his feet, the ground receding beneath him.

By chance or by design, the hornet had flown up and back, keeping John's body between it and the majority of the defenders. He heard a couple shots whip by, but neither of them hit. He was already a dozen feet off the ground; pretty damn soon, a fall was not going to be survivable. Someone out there — more than one someone — in the distance was shouting his first name, and there were a few calling his last name, too, amid the continuing gunfire.

 _Not this way,_ he thought through the choking pain and shock; _no way in fucking hell_.

Fortunately — or unfortunately — it wasn't the first time he'd been wrapped up in fishhead biotech and forced to shoot his own way to safety. He squirmed in the Skitter's grip, leaning to one side as far as he could and twisting his weapon hand back as far as it would go. The bug was a pretty big target, and the risk of a nasty graze seemed pretty small compared to what would happen if he _didn't_ free himself. _Not ever again_.

John pulled the trigger, and nearly blinded himself with the blast of blue energy. The Skitter's wings stuttered and dipped a little in the air, bringing him back within ten feet or so of the ground, then went still just as the muscled tail went slack around him. He thrashed, but he was already tipping backward at an unrecoverable angle before he managed to dislodge it; all he could do was let himself relax and hope for the best. He felt his left foot strike first, then his ass as he collapsed in an effort to bleed momentum — and then his back was bouncing off the squashed, scorched corpse of his kidnapper, knocking the rest of the air out of him.

"Pope! Pope?" A blurry form with long blonde hair stooped over him as he dragged in a gasping breath, near to gagging on the smell of crushed bug.

He looked blearily up at her, and gave an awkward nod. "Hey, Mags. Gimme a sec, would you; I — shit!" His left ankle was already twinging, and he had a feeling he was going to be aching like crazy elsewhere in another minute, but there was nothing wrong with his gun arm; he swept the Volm weapon up and knocked another hornet darting toward her back right out of the sky.

She flinched, looking wide-eyed back over her shoulder, then shook her head as he slowly sat up, testing himself for any worse injuries. "Clearly, you're going to be fine; I don't know why I thought otherwise," she said wryly, holding a hand down to him.

He smirked at her and took it, using the leverage to get back to his feet, then glanced back toward the other end of the bridge, where the bulk of the swarm seemed to have moved. Only about a third of them were left; he didn't think they'd managed to get more than a handful of victims, which was probably luckier than they ...

His gaze met Tom's, a football field's worth of space still between them, and all thought momentarily fled at the naked emotion written all over the man's features. Then, within that heartbeat's worth of time, all the remaining flying Skitters dove right at the gathered knot of Charleston's finest, and John realized how stupid he'd been to so much as _think_ the word 'lucky'.

"No!" he shouted as Tom disappeared behind a moving wall of winged enemy. He fired at them as quickly as he could without risking hitting anyone human; but it wasn't enough, not for the numbers of those things. If they were fast enough, if they shielded each other with their own bodies ...

Sure enough, he saw one rising into the sky with a passenger, in the middle of a buzzing pack. Tom had been using a long rifle, too long to turn around in his arms the way John had his pistol, and they were taking no chances, darting skyward quicker than Tom could wriggle free. Everyone else at that end of the bridge was busy defending their own lives, too encumbered to react to their President's predicament, and he and Maggie were the only ones at _his_ end even looking the right direction. He fired, hoping against hope, but all he had was the handgun, not a weapon designed to be accurate at that range, and Maggie didn't seem to be having any luck either.

As soon as they were out of range, the prize pack of Skitters took off after the others he'd seen depart, heading straight north at the best speed their wings could take them. John only became aware that he'd been shouting at the top of his lungs as his voice started to rasp painfully in his throat.

"No, no, no, no, no ..."

The rest of the Skitters left off bedeviling the group at the other end of the bridge as soon as the ones bearing their prize were out of range; either they'd decided to cut their losses, or their Overlord had realized he'd got what he came for. They zoomed up and over, following their successful brethren toward wherever they'd been spawned, and John snarled, taking a limping step in that direction, fully intending to follow them.

Two things stopped him almost simultaneously in the next few seconds. One was a hand wound into the back of his jacket; the other was a young woman's shrill, despairing scream.

"Daddy!" Alexis Glass-Mason called at the top of her lungs; John hadn't heard her voice since before her last age-up, but he knew immediately that it was her. And almost as though in answer to that desperate call, storm clouds began boiling up out of nowhere: great, dark, heavy-bellied things swelling up from the direction of the sea, crackling with energy as they grew to cover the sky.

"Oh, _fuck_ ," he muttered to himself, wondering if this was part of what Mason had been waiting to tell him.

Lightning speared down rapid-fire from the ominous wall of black and grey, and one by one, every hornet in that last cluster fell out of the sky — just barely too late to catch the group in front of them.

"Daddy," he heard Alexis wail again, brokenly, behind him. Maggie's grip on his back went slack as he turned to look, along with everyone else on his side of the bridge.

From the safety of her mother's clutching arms, a slender figure that strongly resembled a three-quarter-sized Anne Glass trembled, arms reaching after her father, a streak of shocking white bleached into her hair. For about half a second, ice chilled John's veins as he looked at her ...

...And then she began to sob, and she was just a child again, the same size as his own daughter. Who gave a fuck _what_ she was; she was Tom's, and she was hurting.

The next thing he knew, he was kneeling next to Alexis and Anne, in the middle of a goddamn Mason group hug, his other arm around Tanya. Something deep in his backside ached like a motherfucker and his ankle was threatening to fold under him, but that hardly mattered; though he blamed the pain, later, for his inability to explain why he'd done it.

He could hear Weaver somewhere nearby yelling instructions, and Marshall somewhere further distant, giving her own orders. But they might as well have been Charlie Brown characters for all the words were registering.

John looked up at the sky in the direction Mason had been taken, then swore again as fat raindrops began sheeting down from the newborn clouds overhead.

He'd let himself forget: where there was beauty, there was also pain.

The fishheads were going to _pay_ for this, if it was the last thing he fucking did.

* * *

"He said," John rasped sometime later, after all the wounded had been rounded up, the missing counted, the hornet corpses piled up to be burned, and the forty-some remaining folks in Marshall's group belatedly welcomed into town. The irritation in his throat brought on a cough; he rode it out, then took a sip from the glass of water someone handed him. "Mason said he was already planning the assault on Charlotte. How soon?"

"Now, Pope ..." someone on the other side of the conference table started to object.

He slammed a hand down on the tabletop, then shook his stinging palm. "How soon?" he repeated.

Weaver gave him an evaluating, haunted look. "You can't be sure they took him there."

"If we don't find him _there_ , then we'll scout the next one and take _it_ down, and then the next," he said, then coughed into his fist again. "I don't see what's so difficult to understand about that concept."

Porter looked at Weaver, then at him, then cleared his throat. "No one is saying we _shouldn't_ liberate these prisons. But given the timing ..."

"No one's saying it, but we all know it. These are more than prisons, they're goddamn concentration camps," he rasped. " _Their_ President's in one. _Our_ President's probably in one, by now. I'm sure Marshall's people will want to come along, if you're worried about integrating them into the city with everything else going on. But I'm not sitting here and _waiting_ when I could be out there, _getting Tom back_."

Porter exchanged a look with someone on the other side of Weaver; Marina Peralta, John realized, as he followed the general's gaze. Marina cleared her throat, then turned to him, a troubled expression on her face. "It isn't just Marshall's soldiers that people are worried about. It's ..."

"Alexis," he finished for her, a muscle in his jaw jumping at the realization.

She swallowed and nodded. "Everyone was aware that she's ... unique; but what happened on that bridge today is one step further than many are able to easily accept," she said, almost apologetically.

John snarled; he knew where that could easily lead. Straight to Anne picking up her skirts and running while Tom was unavoidably out of the picture and unable to object. Again.

"Then woman up and tell them to _fucking deal_ ," he growled at her. "She's a natural-born citizen of this grand experiment in apocalyptic democracy. She's also a fucking victim of this war, _just like they are_. She's got all the same rights they do, and she hasn't harmed any of them. Hell, she might even have saved some of their asses today. If you let a bunch of chicken-livered bigots make this place unwelcome for Tom's daughter after all of that, then you don't _deserve_ the trust he placed in you."

Peralta stared at him for a long moment, hollow-eyed, then nodded jerkily. "You have a point," she said.

Weaver's eyes were still one him, cooler and more remote than they'd been in a while. "Time was, you'd have been first on the list of those claiming she was dangerous and needed to be — watched — for everyone's safety," he said, gruffly. "Or that sending so many of our resources out after just one man was an unacceptable risk."

John didn't even dignify that with an eyeroll. He knew exactly what Weaver had avoided saying. "You know, maybe there _is_ a world out there where I could look at a terrified kid my own daughter's age and see her only as a threat. Or that I'd see those camps going up and _not_ see the next best blow we could strike against the Overlords, regardless of who might be in 'em. Maybe I _am_ that much of a hypocrite. Say that's true. Does it _really_ make a difference right now? Are you honestly gonna argue with me about this?"

Weaver's jaw worked, then he shook his head. "Just making sure we're all on the same page, here."

"Great. Fantastic," he drawled, voice dripping with disdain, then coughed and took another long draught of the water, wishing for a nice cold beer. "So answer my damn question. How close to ready are we?"

Weaver exchanged a look with Porter, then nodded to him. "We can leave as early as tomorrow afternoon. Just as soon as everyone that wants to go's had a hot meal, at least eight hours of rest, and a trip to the infirmary."

In other words, they were waiting on the people now, not the planning or the gear. "Screw _that_."

"I'm serious, Pope," Weaver insisted. "Don't think I didn't see the way you limped comin' in here, and you're not the only one that got tossed around a little by one of those hornets." He rubbed at his left shoulder, and John noticed belatedly that he had a stained white bandage tied around his upper arm. "We'll need everyone as close to a hundred percent as possible before we go. Besides, that'll position us best to hit in the middle of the night, tomorrow night, when most of the prisoners will hopefully be sleeping and out of the line of fire."

"If Captain Marshall and her folks want to volunteer, I'll talk to them myself; otherwise, we'll find housing and temporary duties for them until we retrieve the President," Porter nodded.

"Which President, though? That's the question," John shook his head. "I wish to God we'd never rode out to meet 'em."

"But you did; and we'll just have to trust that was the right thing," Peralta offered, dark eyes sympathetic.

John snorted. "I have never in my life done anything because it was the _right thing to do_. Remember that, if any sudden 'unavoidable delays' should happen to crop up before the mission leaves tomorrow," he said acidly. Then he braced himself against the table and levered himself to his feet, nodding briefly at those around him. "Now if you'll excuse me, there's a few things I gotta do."

He hadn't actually finished his debriefing, but no one tried to stop him as he limped his way out, and the people he encountered in his halting stalk down the halls took one look at his face and ducked out of the way with surprising speed. The 'right thing' — she might as well have said 'the greater good', and there were exactly two things in all the world right now that qualified to him as 'greater good'. And one of those had just been taken away by the Espheni.

Fuck if he could explain how that happened. Mason was like the tide, with a sneaky undertow that caught a man right off his feet when he wasn't looking. One fight in a forest, one chance to see each other without their public masks, and John had suddenly found himself in the middle before he hardly knew he'd begun. Trying to hold back a little for his own sanity hadn't worked out so well, either. So much for self-sufficiency.

John pushed through the door to the infirmary, then came to a pained halt as he set eyes on his daughter.

Tanya was busy setting up an IV for a badly scratched soldier in a 14th Virginia uniform; one of Marshall's troops, quite possibly the one Tector had brought back down. The pain wiped out of his face like someone had taken an eraser to him as the medication began to kick in. John swallowed, looking at the slim dark-haired teenager in her makeshift nurse's uniform, a familiar battered book cover peeking out of a pocket, and remembered the voices he'd heard calling when that hornet had snagged him.

What would he have done if she'd been taken, too? Did it make him a shitty father to want to leave her behind again so soon? Well, that wouldn't exactly be news; she deserved better than a perpetually angry ex-con like John Pope. It was a source of endless wonderment to him that she was back in his life at all.

He took a half-step back, almost ready to turn and leave ... and then Tanya looked up and caught sight of him.

Her face changed instantly, the soothing, professional smile she'd been offering the wounded soldier falling away as her big blue eyes widened, shining with tears. "Dad?" she breathed.

John's mouth twitched in a wobbly smile, and he found tears starting in his own eyes. Damn it. "Hey baby girl," he said, opening his arms to her.

She rushed to him, throwing her arms around him, and buried her face in his shoulder. "I saw it grab you, and I thought — I was so afraid —" she said, voice choked with emotion.

"Hey, hey, I'm here, I'm here," he said. "Your old man's too stubborn to go out like that."

She sniffled, tightening her grip on him. "Lexie's so upset — is it bad of me to be glad you're still here, when they got _her_ dad? I mean, I like Mr. Mason, he told me a bunch of funny stories while you were gone about the stuff you got up to before you found me, and I know you're like dating him and all, but —"

"Shh, shhh." He patted her back, grimacing over her head. "Of course it's not. And we're gonna get him back, don't you worry. A bunch of us are going out tomorrow evening, taking the train up to Charlotte to knock down the prison there. If that's where they took him, we'll have him back in a jiff."

She clung harder at that, her voice shooting up a register. "You're _leaving_ again?"

He winced. "Sorry, honey, it's kind of my job. But I'm here tonight, okay? I'm here tonight. We'll have dinner, and talk about this book club you're having with Matt and Alexis, and you can tell me all about your job or whatever. I'll be here for breakfast, too. Then I'll go do my thing, and I'll be back the next day, all right? Skitters haven't got me yet; they aren't gonna get me now, either."

She took another shaky breath, then pulled back, looking up at him with wet eyes. "You _promise_ ," she said, more an order than a question.

What good were promises in this crapshoot world? But he couldn't let his little girl down again. "I promise," he assured her. Then he reached up and removed the Skitter claw necklace he'd worn constantly ever since he'd killed his first one, in her and her brother's name. "Here. Wear this for me the next couple days, all right? You start worrying about me, you just look at this ugly thing, and you remember what a badass your old man is. I'm gonna be just fine."

She took a deep, shaky breath, then let it out again and nodded, taking the necklace and sliding it on over the stethoscope she already wore around her neck. "It isn't ugly, it's cool," she objected, wiping at her wet cheeks.

Then she narrowed her eyes, looking him over more critically. "Wait, are you hurt? Has Dr. Glass looked you over yet? No, of course not, what am I thinking — I'm such an idiot!" She shook her head, then dragged him over to a chair. "Sit down, I'll go get her."

"Tanya ..." John reached after her, but she was already off, scurrying toward the corner of the infirmary designated as Dr. Glass' office.

The woman herself was bowed over her desk, face propped in her hands, but she looked up at Tanya's approach and cast her gaze down the infirmary at whatever his daughter was telling her. She eyed John up and down with a shrewd eye, then shooed Tanya back toward her former patient and got up, coming to deal with him herself.

He hadn't taken the chair — hadn't thought it wise, until he was ready to stay down for a while — so he met the doc half way; figured he might as well go ahead and get it over with.

She raised an eyebrow at him when she reached him, gesturing toward one of the nearby beds. "I was there when you crossed the bridge after ... everything that happened," she said sternly, "so I know you probably don't think you need the attention, but adrenaline can mask a lot of damage. So let's take a look."

John made a face. "I can walk well enough to go on the raid tomorrow, that's all I care about. I'll make it easy on you — give me a couple aspirin and send me on my way."

Anne gave him an extremely nonplused look. "And what do you think will happen if I tell Dan I'm concerned about your ankle, and that you shouldn't be going anywhere? Up on the bed, Pope."

"You wouldn't," he scowled at her.

"I absolutely would." She tipped her chin up, glaring him down. "I had a headache from the paint fumes in the room we picked for the new infirmary even before the shitshow out there today; I don't have any patience left for your bullshit. And if retrieving Tom in any way depends on something you might do, you are _not_ going to be a liability out there."

He gave up at that point and let her bully him onto the thin mattress, examining his various injuries with clinical hands. She even tsk'ed over the scratch on his wrist; old news, now. He'd honestly forgotten all about the prior attack in the woods, but he had to go over that for her, too.

"Paint fumes, huh?" he finally asked, to distract her. "What color'd you end up going with?" Apparently, Tom actually _had_ taken his advice on the subject.

"You talked to Tom about that?" she said, surprised; then shook her head. "What am I saying? Of course you did. For a man so concerned with looking respectable, he really doesn't give a damn about interior decorating, does he? Or _exterior_ decorating, for that matter, as long as it's orderly."

"Lives in his head too much, that one. Someone's gotta point out the obvious, sometimes," John shrugged.

Anne looked up at that, and he met her gaze evenly; they'd talked around the subject before, and been talked to separately by Tom, but they hadn't really faced each other directly on the matter. Now that Tom was — well, no doubt already working on rescuing himself, _yet again_ — he wasn't in the mood to tiptoe widely around her feelings anymore. They were going to have to reach an armistice at some point, anyway.

For a moment, he wasn't sure which way she was going to respond; the woman was Maggie's friend, after all, and the sheltered doctor who hadn't even known how to fire a gun when they'd first met had long since been burned out of her. Then she snorted, and one corner of her mouth curved up in a cynical smile.

"Maybe you'll have better luck with that than I ever did," she said lightly, carefully manipulating his ankle. Then she shifted the topic smoothly, asking about any other aches and pains he was experiencing.

By all rights, that should have felt like a win; John found himself swallowing back a lump in his throat instead, wondering where all this damn tolerance was coming from. It left him decidedly wrong-footed. He submitted as patiently as he could to all her poking and prodding and the Ace bandage she wrapped around his ankle, then took the aspirin he'd asked for in the first place and glared at the cane she handed him.

"You're not as badly injured as Tom was; or even as badly as you were when you were shot in the thigh. If you don't make it worse, the pain should clear up within the next few days as the ligaments in your ankle start to heal and the swelling goes down. But if you manage to aggravate either injury within the next twenty-four hours, I guarantee you won't be going anywhere outside of this city. Listen to your body, and play it safe," she told him, firmly.

"All right, all right, I'll take it," he said, then eyed her again, warily. "...If you'll tell me where to find your daughter."

She bristled back up instantly. "I don't think that's a good idea," she began, defensively. "Lexie isn't a danger to anyone. She didn't even know she could do that, and she's devastated about what happened. If you upset her ..."

"Cool your jets, woman," John held up a hand. "I got the impression from Tom there was a lot going on he didn't want to talk about over Volm airwaves — but whatever's going on with her, believe it or not, I like the kid, and I know what it's like to be horrified by something you did without really meaning to."

Framing it that way seemed to startle her; Anne sighed, then nodded, shoulders slumping in a way that told him how many people had already accosted her about her daughter. "She's with Lourdes right now; they're in her and Tanya's quarters. You don't ask Lourdes to leave, and I'll check in with her later about how it went," she conceded, a warning note in her voice.

"Fair enough," he nodded at her, then took the cane, gave his daughter a thumbs-up across the infirmary to show he was okay, and headed out into the hall.

* * *

He knocked softly at the door of the room his daughter and Lourdes shared, then eased it open slowly. Lourdes looked up at his entrance; she was reclining on the pillows on her bed, half sitting up, with Lexie's head in her lap. Except for the new pale streak in Lexie's hair, the pair of them could have passed for sisters with their similar coloring; might as well have been, too, the way Anne had always taken Lourdes under her wing.

Lexie didn't stir as he entered; Lourdes spoke quietly as she smoothed a hand over the girl's hair. "I'm sorry; Tanya isn't here. She's on shift in the infirmary right now."

"I know," John nodded. "I just came from there; Anne told me where to find Alexis."

Lexie stirred a little at the sound of her name, but didn't look toward him; her gaze was fixed on the wall.

"I don't think she wants to talk to anyone right now," Lourdes shook her head at him, sadly.

"That's all right. I'll do all the talking for both of us," he said, then limped carefully across the room, kneeling down in the girl's line of sight. The move pulled on whatever it was he'd bruised down underneath — he wasn't calling it a 'sitz bone', no matter what Anne said — but he did his best to keep the wince off his face. "Lexie?"

She blinked, but didn't otherwise respond, still staring past him with damp, reddened eyes.

"I just wanted you to know," John said, near as undone by that look in her eye as he'd been by Tanya's tears. Fucking Masons. "I'm going after your dad tomorrow. And I want you to do something for me while I'm gone."

That finally stirred her attention; she focused on him, a frown pulling down the corners of her mouth.

"Promise me you'll practice that shit," he said, firmly.

Lexie flinched, then stirred again and sat up slowly, bracing herself against Lourdes' legs. "What?" she said shakily, voice thin and tentative. "I thought — I thought you'd be —"

"Like all the other numbnuts?" he scoffed. "You know better than that, princess. And I know you: you're blaming yourself for not being quick enough out there, today."

Her lip wobbled again, and fresh tears welled in her eyes. "I tried to save him, Uncle John, I swear, but —"

"Shhh." John reached out and gripped her shoulder, gently. It was hard to see her as a danger, like this — and that was why he had to make her understand. "Of course you did. No shame in not being able to hit a target your first try — you know I know my weapons, and _you_ didn't even know you could do that. Thing is, though. Now you _do_ know. And what if more of those things come after your mother or your brother Matt while me and your dad are both gone?"

Lexie's eyes widened, and she brushed at her cheeks. "But people are scared of me. I could feel it."

"Yeah, 'cause it's new, and freakish, and you _weren't in control_. They're worried you might accidentally hurt one of _them_. So make a thing of it. Take someone with you, like Lourdes here or Dr. Kadar or someone they _do_ trust, and find somewhere to practice. Not just the lightning — whatever else you can do, too. Make it _ordinary_ , even if it is still a little weird. Make people yawn and think, 'oh there goes Lexie again, doing her thing.' And then when you gotta use it again, you'll know _exactly_ what you're doing."

That probably wasn't the advice Tom would have given her; and he knew it might upset the applecart with Dr. Glass again. But he didn't think repressing it was going to do anything more than make Alexis resentful and scared of her own shadow, not to mention leave her vulnerable to further manipulation by the Espheni. Bad for her, bad for Charleston when the inevitable fallout hit, and bad for _him_ when Tom came back to find her and Anne missing again. Better all around to make sure she had the tools to make _herself_ safe.

He _did_ feel a sense of vindication this time when Lexie nodded, then threw her arms around him in a quick, tight hug. He made the expected grimace and protesting noises, but didn't fight her off, either; he waited 'til she let go, then reclaimed his cane and levered himself back to his feet.

"All right then," he said, clearing his throat as he nodded to her, then Lourdes. "If Dr. Glass wants to track me down and beat me with my cane, you can tell her I'll be at dinner."

"I'll make sure she knows," Lourdes replied with a wry smile.

* * *

Dinner went by fast; he wasn't really up to moderating his temper in a room full of people jabbering about everyday concerns while Tom was out there, eating whatever the Espheni deigned — or _didn't_ deign — to provide, but he'd promised Tanya, so he sat there and endured, ignoring everyone else's sideways looks.

She tried to keep his mood up, recounting nearly unrecognizable second-hand glimpses of him as the bullet-making hero of Kennedy High School, an opinionated gourmet chef to rival Gordon Ramsay, and the motorcycle-riding badass who'd helped break the siege of Fitchburg. Tom hadn't even been there for that last; he must've asked one of the other Berserkers for the details ... in the name of cheering up John's daughter.

Everything just seemed to cycle back to that; to the sight of Tom being pulled up into the sky, flailing in a flying Skitter's grip. He held it together as long as he could for Tanya's sake, then sent her back to Lourdes and Lexie and made his limping way up and out to the Nest, hoping to drown the rest of the evening among those who'd know better than to ask a bunch of stupid questions.

He made it about three steps in before he saw what he should have known he would, if he'd put any thought into it at all: the big smudged blackboard on the far side of the main room, chalked up with odds on the current and near-future status of one President Tom Mason.

He came to a livid halt, so furious that he literally couldn't see straight. It was a long moment before he realized the reason he wasn't moving forward was that someone had thrown an arm out to stop him, and that the silence in the room was caused by more than just his inability to hear over the grinding of his jaw.

"C'mon, Boss," Lyle said, low and urgent, in his ear. "You know they don't mean nothing by it. C'mon. I saved back a few bottles of the good stuff from the last batch — let's get you out of here."

He _should_ have expected it. Fuck if it hadn't still caught him off guard, though, seeing it from the other side. If it hadn't been for the cane —

He let Lyle manhandle him out to the bus, and if later that evening he woke up, still drunk and feeling spectacularly alone, and if he so happened to stumble past politely blind sentries down to a certain apartment down under Charleston, well, no one said a single word to him about it, then or later.

He shamelessly downed more than the usually allowed coffee ration the next morning, managed a wan smile for Tanya, and then headed into the planning meetings with all the rage a man could hold burning in his heart.

* * *

"So. Charlotte," Weaver said, resting a forefinger over the map spread out on the conference room table. "For the most part, the plan's pretty much like Jacksonville."

Thick lines of dark ink spread out under his hand, marking the route of the Norfolk Southern Railway system, connecting Charleston to Columbia and Columbia to Charlotte. It had been a freight line, not a speedy Amtrak route before the invasion, but as far as the scouts had been able to tell it had mostly been cleared by people looting supplies not long after the trains had stopped. What minor repair or clearance expansion might have been needed through the bombed-out cities had been taken care of several weeks before, when they'd initially cleared all the north and westbound tracks to throw the Espheni off the scent of which grid tower they were targeting.

Hal cleared his throat, then spoke up. "I did some asking around, last night. One of the reasons I wanted to hit Norfolk Naval Base was because of the big tracked vehicles I hoped to find there. But it occurred to me on our way back — what about civilian sources? Turns out there was a Caterpillar place just up the road in Summerville that specialized in big earthmoving and construction equipment. We might not need it this time — but I'd like to send a squad out while we're gone, in case we need to take the grid gun offroading at the next one."

No one challenged the assumption that there would be a next one; Marshall was in the meeting, standing over at the wall behind Weaver, argument enough for that point of view. Even if they found Mason right away, they were still going to have to go back to find Hathaway, and odds were they'd find him in Richmond or Greensboro.

"Done," Weaver nodded. "Have the engineers write down the specs they think we'll need, and we'll get that ball rolling before we go. Good thinking there, Hal."

"Yeah, good thinking Hal," John said, irritably. "Mind always one step ahead, just like your old man's."

"Do you have a point to make?" Hal flared up, glaring at him. "Or are you just going to poke holes in everything, like you always do?"

"Easy, Hal," Weaver said, throwing a glance at the kid. Then he switched the paternally disapproving glare on John. "You got something to say, Pope?"

"Yeah, I got something to say," he snarled, glaring at the map. "The more time we waste here, the longer it'll be before that fence comes down. Riding the rail up's going to be a hell of a lot quicker than what we just did on horseback, but the tradeoff for that is that we're definitely gonna get ambushed along the way. Best way through'll be speed and overwhelming firepower. I got another of those mech-metal RPG's saved up for a rainy day; anyone figure out the munitions in Cochise's box of toys while we were gone?"

"Nothin' that'll be useful yet," Weaver shook his head. "But Dr. Kadar's team finally finished the energy weapon modifications; every single person on this mission will have access to at least one Volm-modified gun, and we'll have a total of eight of the anti-aircraft ones with us. It'll be risky, but they also won't be expecting anything like what we're about to unleash on 'em. Get in, raise hell, get gone."

"The rebel Skitters have agreed to participate as well," Ben put in his two cents. "They're just as angry about the hornets as we are about our people that were taken. The minute the laser wall is down, they'll dismount the train and distract the Skitter guards in the city. We can use their cars to load up the refugees — they'll make their own way back when the battle's over."

"That takes care of the ships and the ground troops — which leaves the mechs, the Espheni itself, and any flying-bug escort it may have for the rest of us," Captain Marshall spoke up. "These Volm weapons you've mentioned — they're effective against their killing machines? Not just the Beamer defenses that Lt. Fisher saw?"

"We can take the older models down entirely with EMP grenades; they don't field those much anymore," Porter filled her in. "But the newer ones — it'll take a few shots, but yes, we've taken them out with the energy rifles."

"Then my people are definitely in; this will be the biggest blow they've been able to strike since we went to ground in West Virginia." She met gazes very briefly with Weaver; he nodded to her, as professional a nod as he'd have given any of his officers, and Marshall's gaze flickered away again almost instantly.

Marina Peralta cleared her throat and spoke up then, drawing Weaver's attention back across the table. "Unfortunately, you won't be able to coordinate with the prisoners in advance, so I located a few megaphones to enable you to more effectively communicate your intentions and hopefully reduce the risk of collateral damage."

"I know Tom was worried about that," Weaver nodded. "Thank you; we'll make use of 'em."

"Don't thank me too quickly," she said, straightening her back and clasping her hands in her lap. She flicked a glance at John, opaque with some emotion he couldn't name, then back to Weaver. "I feel I must remind you that you will be taking the majority of our defensive as well as offensive capability with you on this mission. Hopefully we will be able to optimize this process in future; but at the moment, Charleston will be more vulnerable while you are gone than at any time since the Volm arrived. If something goes badly wrong, if you even _suspect_ the tide is turning against you, then I am ordering you now to disengage and return to Charleston immediately with as much matériel as possible. We cannot afford a Pyrrhic victory, here."

"Understood," Weaver replied, jaw tensed; but John could see the gazes flying around the room, and knew as surely as he knew his own name that while the 'matériel' might make its way back — most of the personnel wouldn't.

Someone needed to teach that woman not to give orders she already knew wouldn't be obeyed: the next remedial lesson on her leadership curriculum. But it wouldn't be him, and it wouldn't be today.

"We done here, then?" he said, drumming his fingers on the edge of the table. "Any more last minute caveats or addendums? Or can I give my troops the go-order?"

Weaver gave him one last long look, then nodded. "Dismissed. Assemble at sixteen hundred. And Pope — you and your Berserkers will be riding with me. Be grateful you're going at all, the state you're in."

"Aye-aye, sir," John bit out, giving him a snappy salute, then shoved up from the table and stalked out the door, the fine bones in his hand aching from how tightly he was gripping the cane.

* * *

John spent most of the next few hours in the kitchens: hair tied back, sleeves rolled up, and the blast of the hot ovens baking the lingering chill from his bones. He was done with _everything_ at the moment, and between his shitty mood and the fact that he _knew_ Weaver would bounce him from the mission if he showed up smelling of liquor, holing up where he could do no harm seemed like the better part of valor.

It wasn't as though they had anyone else that really understood the art of baking, anyway; he hadn't had a decent slice of fresh bread since the last time he'd been up to his elbows in dough back in Acton, and the brick-hard little hockey pucks someone had tried to pass off as cookies the week before had been a _disgrace_. Whoever'd been in charge of the welcome dinner for Marshall's bunch had really been falling down on the job, in his opinion.

By the time Ox stuck his head in to let him know it was about that time — following his nose, he'd said — he'd made three people cry, but he felt a little less like he was going to boil over at the least provocation. Only one of them had been genuinely distressed, anyway; he was almost embarrassed for the other two. Had it really been that long since they'd had a decent brownie? What had they been saving that cocoa powder for, anyway?

 _People_. Couldn't live with 'em, couldn't kill 'em. He gave his daughter a warm square fresh out of the pan with his farewell hug, and dared anyone to comment.

He probably should have saved another for Weaver. The colonel hadn't been kidding about keeping John under his nose, it turned out; John, Lyle and Anthony were all up front with him, the remaining Berserkers in the next car back with Hal, Maggie, and the rest of the Mason extended friends and family plan. A few more cars full of soldiers bracketed the extra-wide, heavy duty flat car carrying the grid gun and Dr. Kadar's team; the Skitters brought up the rear, venting nasal shrieking noises that made John shudder even from the opposite end of the train.

Under other circumstances, John might've been angry about the apparent demotion, but in this case — well, it wasn't like he'd be any further from the action, and it did mean he didn't have to deal with distraction of managing anyone other than himself when the fur started flying. He said as much to Weaver with a sardonic grin once they were in motion, and was surprised at the flatly annoyed look the colonel turned on him.

"I'm damn pissed at you, actually," Weaver said, sourly. "What's the use of figuring out how to trust someone if you can't _rely_ on him in the clutch because he goes and loses his damn mind?"

"I don't think you've got much room to throw stones there, Cap," John replied in kind. "Or are we talking about Mason, here? Because in that case, I'd have to agree with you."

Weaver glanced at Lyle and Anthony, who were studiously keeping their attention on the instruments, then back to John, shaking his head. "The point is, I could've used you in a leadership role today, and instead, I'm gonna have to rely on Hal. And good as that boy is, I'm not sure I can trust Katie's people to follow the lead of a teenager who ain't even in uniform."

"...Which means you gotta hang back and be the boss, when you'd rather be in the thick of things," John narrowed his eyes at him. "You're just as compromised as the rest of us, admit it."

"You forget, this ain't the first time I've dealt with Tom disappearing in front of me," Weaver replied, jabbing him in the chest with a pointing finger. "It's just the first time he's meant this much to _you_ , and suddenly, you've forgotten how to keep your eye on the ball."

"A man's gotta have his priorities," John didn't disagree, shaking his head and turning to look out at the passing terrain. "Speaking of which ..."

"So help me, if you say 'are we there yet' ..." Weaver turned up the glare several degrees.

"Far be it from me to disturb your delicate sensibilities," John held up the hand not bracing himself against the wall, then glanced forward again. "Actually, I was gonna ask, where's the damn aliens? I _know_ they've got to've spotted us by now."

"Oh, they'll be waiting for us," Weaver grimaced, shaking his head. "Just you wait."

* * *

...For maximum psychological impact, maybe? Whatever the reason — Weaver was right. Ten minutes shy of the fence, a pack of Mega-mechs came into view, straddling the tracks with weapons hot.

"Here we go again," John shook his head, then shouldered his weapon and prepared to fire.

-(6/10)-


	7. A Revealing Experience

_"He didn't do those things just so there would be one single lord, a being of genius, but they had the effect of humbling all the tribes when he did them. It was just his way of revealing himself, but because of it he became the sole head of the tribes."_  
— Popul Vuh, Part Five

* * *

Epictetus, his favorite Greek philosopher, had once said, 'It's not what happens to you, but how you react to it that matters.' Tom wondered what it said about him that he would far rather be the one taken by the enemy, than the one left behind, watching a loved one be taken.

Selfishness, perhaps: that he'd rather cause that pain than experience it himself, ever again. Ego: believing that he could bear up under the challenge better than the rest of his family would. And, yes, a little desperate love as well: to willingly cast his body between theirs and danger. He knew what people said about him — why _John_ said people followed him so willingly — but _he_ knew he was no hero. Except in the most cynical sense of the word: 'someone who gets other people killed'.

He could bear anything other than watching that happen to yet another person he cared about, even endure another round of Espheni hospitality. One moment he'd been screaming in denial, watching a flying Skitter drag John up into the sky; the next, before he'd even finished catching his breath in relief that the other man had fought his way loose, another hornet had taken advantage of his distraction to grab _him_. And now ...

"You're brooding again," a familiar voice murmured, and Tom blinked, his line of thought completely derailed. The hornet-thing was gone, and with it the choking grip of its tail around his chest, the dizzying sweep of sky and cloud, the distant snap of sudden thunder; he was standing in the middle of a very familiar room instead. One several hundred miles — and several years — away from that bridge in Charleston.

He couldn't possibly be there, but it was also impossible to mistake his surroundings for anything other than the clean blue walls and orderly furnishings of his bedroom back in Boston. It hadn't actually looked that way since before the invasion, he knew; he'd slept in its decaying ghost only the month before, during his and John's retreat from Karen's tower, and there'd been almost nothing left of the haven it had been during the years he and Rebecca had raised their sons there. Only dust, debris, and desolation. But the sight of it restored tugged at his spirit with a nostalgic yearning he couldn't quite block out, even knowing that it couldn't be real.

"He'll be fine," the soothing voice repeated, and Tom glanced toward the open doorway, swallowing hard at the sight of Rebecca. Why did they always have to use Rebecca?

"I know he will," he said — then blinked at the utter familiarity of it, how automatically the words had fallen from his mouth. Maybe this wasn't so much like Karen's virtual programming, after all; _this_ was the memory he'd been dreaming variations of for weeks now, though it was the first time it had felt so vividly _real_.

"Boys. He was upset too, you know; just didn't want his daddy to see it. Nine years old, and his first time away from home. So I told him to look up at the moon tonight." His long-dead wife walked closer, sliding her hands up his chest with a soft smile. It was hard, so hard, not to lean forward and sink into that touch.

"Because as long as the moon is up, he isn't alone; chances are, someone else in the family is staring up at that same moon," Tom said stiffly, cutting the conversation short with the words she would have spoken next.

Her smile brightened at that. "You're beginning to get the picture," she said approvingly, then reached up to press one palm against his cheek. Her hand was warm, and yielding, and utterly, utterly _wrong_ in some way he didn't have the words to explain. "It's so easy to get discouraged, when you first realize how small you are and how very big and scary the universe is. Knowing you're not alone can make all the difference in the world."

...She'd said that to him once, too; or, at least, the real Rebecca had. But not in the same conversation.

A frown dragged Tom's brows together as he stared down into that pale, beautiful face. "Why are you telling me this? Why these games? You have to know by now that interrogating me this way won't work."

Rebecca pulled back a little at that, giving him the arched brow that had always meant, 'Dear, don't be so obtuse.'

"Nice try, Tom," she said in chiding tones, shaking her head. "You promised me we'd talk before dinner."

 _What_ was going on? "I'm not interested in ..." he started to say, then groaned, bending over to wrap an arm around his ribs as a stabbing ache flared up in a band around his chest. "What ...?"

The word caught harshly in his throat; Tom coughed, then blinked his eyes open again and flinched as his center of gravity abruptly tipped over, literally on its ear. Rebecca wasn't there anymore — and he wasn't standing up, either; he was lying on his side, on a hard, leathery-feeling surface, curled around the bruising left by the flying Skitter's vicious grip. He'd lost consciousness less than a minute into the flight, and clearly, something had seized the opportunity to disturb his mind in that vulnerable state.

Something — or someone? It hadn't felt as harsh as his previous encounters with Espheni mental influence, and too detailed to be pure flashback or the invention of an unconscious mind. But there was another possibility, given recent discoveries. One he'd have to put some more thought into when he wasn't under unfriendly eyes.

A pair of feet moved into his line of vision, human feet clad in worn work boots. Tom wondered for a moment if he was going to be kicked, but they stopped a few yards away, and he slowly tipped his head back for a look at their owner. Trousers, shirt, worn jacket, the face of a boy in his late teens or early twenties — and the swell of a harness visible between thin shoulders. This would be the voice of his captor, then.

"Welcome, Tom Mason," the boy said, tone measured and flat: parroting the words of an Overlord somewhere out of sight. Someone had cropped his hair brutally short, and he had just a hint of dark fuzz above his lip; he was older than Ben, probably closer to Hal's age range, and fairly freshly harnessed by the lack of other visible alterations. Probably out of one of the new city-camps — one of the children Cochise had told him had been taken.

"You know my name," he said, stating the obvious as he sat up. He didn't feel any other notable new wounds, just the ache in his chest, and somehow he doubted this was where the Espheni took their usual captives. Was he on one of those ships? Maybe even the one tethered over Charlotte, that he'd just been plotting how to take down? He sort of doubted it — solely on the grounds that things were _never_ that simple.

"I do," the boy replied, eerily serene like every other actively harnessed child he'd encountered.

Some days Tom felt incredibly guilty for what he and John had done, killing Karen — she may have chosen to join the Espheni when given the chance, but surely she never would have done so without the brainwashing she'd undergone first — but she _would_ have returned the favor, if they hadn't stopped her. Right now, all Tom could hope to do was to one day give all the Espheni's slaves, human or otherwise, the chance to make choices of their own.

He glanced around again as he pushed to his feet, hoping to catch sight of the puppeteer, but there were too many shadows to guess which one it occupied. There was enough open space in the ugly, organically textured room to be sure they were definitely on something bigger than a beamer or one of the courier ships, though; several glass screens were suspended along one wall, lit up with surveillance imagery showing people going about their business inside one of the laser-fenced enclosures.

"Do you know _his_ name?" Tom asked pointedly. "This poor kid you're using as a mouthpiece?"

"He's not important," the kid in question replied, blandly.

It was statements like that that wore down on Tom's determination never to act solely out of anger; that made him wonder whether genocide of another group of sentients ever _could_ be moral, and what he'd do if that option was ever made available to him. What he would become, if the war wore on for much longer.

"And that belief, right there, is why you haven't yet won this war," he replied, gritting his teeth in impotent fury.

"Perhaps," the Espheni continued, implacably. "Your complete inability as a species to accept the logic of your situation has, at times, rendered the course of our conquest ... unpredictable. But that will not save your people from its inevitable conclusion."

"We've proven you wrong so far, we'll prove you wrong in this as well," Tom insisted, craning his neck to peer further into the shadowed nooks and crannies of the ship. "So are you going to show yourself, or are you too afraid to come out and do your dirty work?"

"There is nothing dirty to be done," the speaker replied, eyebrows arched as if in surprise. "I have a simple proposition; one that might serve both our goals. You have proven yourself a leader. Assist us with the next stage of our war effort, and we will exempt you and your family from what is to come."

Did he honestly expect Tom to respond positively to that? "I've heard this offer before. 'In exchange for sanctuary, we will set aside a protected area where human survivors will be relocated.' If _this_ is what sanctuary looks like to you, then I definitely made the right decision, and nothing you can say to me is likely to change my mind." He shook his head, gesturing toward the images playing out on the screens.

"They remain alive, do they not?" the Espheni countered. "Had there not been traitors within the ranks of the guard, the inconvenience you represent would have been removed when the original offer was refused. It would be fitting were we to gift you with the same reward as they: genetic alteration into a more useful, mindless form. But that would be a waste of your potential. Agree and turn over the weaponry acquired from your Volm allies, and we will return you to your city and spare those closest to you from the transformation to come."

Useful. Mindless. A chill swept through Tom; he normally believed in choosing the option with the greatest chance for survival, but if ever there was a fate worse than death, that would be it. "What happens if I refuse _this_ offer?"

"Have you willingly gone along with anything we've chosen to do so far?" The young man's voice was practically dripping with disdain as he conveyed the Espheni's rebuttal. The shadows shifted again, and the alien itself finally emerged, staring down at Tom as if to underscore his ultimatum. "You will have forty-eight hours to consider your choices. Until that time, you will join those below."

"And when I say no a second time?" Tom tipped up his chin, staring at the slender being towering over him. Like the Espheni he'd seen before, it wore some kind of skin-tight clothing; unlike most of them, however, this one's garments gave off the impression of a uniform, something stiff and probably armored.

"Then your family will be first in line for alteration as we perfect our new frontline soldiers." The kid delivered the ultimatum without so much as a hint of hesitation. "It is a shame the testing process is so prone to error."

He said nothing more, but he didn't have to. Tom swallowed through the rush of nausea, then inclined his head, playing for time. "I will consider ... very carefully," he said, forcing the words out through clenched teeth.

"We shall see," it replied, then turned its face away, stalking back into the shadows. "Forty-eight hours. Do not forget."

Tom opened his mouth again, unwilling to let the alien have the last word — then closed it again as the floor fell away under his feet, dropping him into a space choked with threads and cords of Espheni biotech. It was like being trapped in a coffin-sized capsule wrapped with stretchy black licorice; one that kept descending at a steady rate, not quite faster than his stomach could keep up.

His breath came short in his chest for a long, panicked moment — until he realized what it was doing. This wasn't another cell; it was an _elevator_. He laughed, the sound a little frantic and breathless even to his own ears, and braced himself to meet whatever challenge was coming next.

* * *

From ground level, the inside of the Espheni prison was even less appealing than the views that had been transmitted back from Charlotte. They really had spared no effort wrecking anything left whole from the original invasion; all buildings more than a few stories tall gaped like broken teeth against the skyline, leaving every street choked with rubble. Even given the destruction, though, it was easy to tell he wasn't in the prison closest to Charleston; John was going to be _furious_. And his kids were never going to let him out of their sight again.

Tom dwelled in that thought for a moment, picturing the faces of each of his family, then sighed and folded all that fraught emotion away again, taking in the loose crowd staring back at him from several paces' distance. None of the prison's inhabitants looked very welcoming, though he really didn't blame them for their mistrust. If they'd seen that elevator thing before, it probably hadn't brought anything beneficial; the Espheni would have make things easier for him if it had sent him down in the grip of another hornet instead.

Which, actually, had probably been the point. Everything those beings did had some logical reason, and often more than one, as abhorrent as they often seemed to human ways of thinking. He wouldn't be surprised if their line of thought this time had gone something like: if Tom Mason didn't survive the next forty-eight hours, he probably hadn't been worthy of their offer anyway, and either way, he'd be one less thorn in their side.

"Who are you?" someone said; and another picked up the question. "What are you doing here?"

"The same as any of you," he said, raising his voice and holding his hands up placatingly as he met as many of the judging eyes around him as he could. "My apologies; they didn't exactly give me time to pack when they snatched me out of Charleston, or I would have brought gifts for my new neighbors."

Some of the ragged, hungry-looking refugees shook their heads and drew away as he proved himself less interesting than they'd hoped; some of the others narrowed their eyes, undoubtedly assessing where he'd fit into their pre-existing chaotic hierarchy. Preferably on a lower rung than _they_ did. One of the onlookers looked genuinely upset, though; a man around Dan's age, who stepped closer at Tom's words.

"You came from Charleston?" he asked, in a voice worn raspy from illness or overuse.

"Yes. Is this Greensboro? Or Richmond? Or did they take me west or south after they got me away from the city?" He could probably piece it together himself eventually, but it gave him something to say, some room to establish a working relationship with these people whose goodwill he'd depend on for the next couple of days. He didn't have any preexisting bonds to rely on, here.

The older man didn't respond to the question, though; he shook his head sharply, the distress in his expression sharpening to something painful. "Are you saying Charleston's fallen? I was on my way there with my family when the hornets found us — we ran into one of those friendly aliens, the Volm, who said it was still free. I drew the hornets away from them so they could make it — but if they took them anyway —"

Tom shook his head as the man's voice rose in panic, trying on a reassuring smile. "No, no. Charleston was still standing last I saw it; I'm sure your family's fine. I was just ... unlucky. Where are we, by the way? I know this isn't Charlotte."

"No, it's Greenboro ... or was," one of the others said sourly, a woman in her mid-thirties with her dark hair shorn off close to the skull and an infected scratch marring one cheek. "It's just another Espheni ghetto, now. Even if they don't have Charleston yet, they will soon; we're all gonna die in here, or someplace just like it."

"I don't believe that," Tom said, meeting her gaze evenly. "I _can't_ believe that. If I know _my_ family, they're already on their way to find me, no matter how many other prisons they have to tear down to get here."

"Feel free to delude yourself," she spat back, "but don't expect the rest of us to buy it. Especially when you came from up _there_."

"Not by choice," he began to explain — then sighed as she turned away, striding off with a huff.

"It was nice to meet you!" Tom called after her, then shook his head in frustration when she threw a finger back over her shoulder in response. Several of the remaining onlookers had lost interest after her reference to the ship as well, turning their backs on him with unease flickering in their expressions. Only a few remained behind — and of those, around half seemed more hostile than genuinely curious. Though again, he could hardly blame them.

If the camp had a leader, he or she didn't seem to be there at the moment; hiding somewhere within line of sight to keep off the Espheni's radar, perhaps? Regardless, there didn't seem to be any point in standing around until someone pressed the matter. He looked around again, turning slowly in place to identify which direction was south, then strode casually out of the open square where the ship had set him down. The few people standing in that direction backed off rather than interact with him, though, looking away rather than meeting his gaze. Maybe if he could find the nearest edge of the laser wall, and pinpoint a weakness in it somewhere ... well, it might be futile, but it would keep him busy until either someone did approach him, or the cavalry arrived. One way or the other, he _was_ going to get out of here; that was all there was to it.

Tom oriented himself by the direction of the sun and shadows as he walked, nodding politely to anyone he passed. Even those folks he didn't recognize from the square looked wary until he passed them by, though, huddled in makeshift shelters or whispering to a close companion. Very few bothered to meet his eyes; one of those was a solitary man with dark skin and a sharp, assessing look, but he didn't ping Tom's danger sense and he didn't give any sign he wanted to speak to him, so Tom kept walking.

It took him maybe ten minutes to reach his goal. Part of a university had been within the boundaries of Greensboro's fence; a fallen 'LIBRARY' sign caught his eye as he picked his way through the rubble, but the bricks that had been part of the building were soot-stained and crumbly, not a hopeful indicator that there might still be anything useful inside. There was a lot of brick construction in that area of the city, actually, mostly discernible now by the dull red particulate mixed with the ever-present concrete-and-asphalt grit. Laundering that out of his clothes was going to be a real chore when he got back to Charleston; it stained nearly as badly as rust.

The fence was visible from that spot, but he couldn't see any sign of the tether. He'd probably have to walk the circumference of the fenced area to find it, and that could take a while. But what other option did he have? After all the planning they'd done for Charlotte, he knew that the power line's location would be where to expect any attempt at rescue. And its proximity, or lack thereof, to the rail lines would also tell him whether there was any chance that that would occur within the 48 hour grace period the Espheni had offered him.

The scuff of a boot behind him told him that further exploration would have to wait for later, though. Someone had finally decided to bite. Tom didn't want to fight any of the other prisoners, but he couldn't just assume whoever it was would feel the same, and he knew he couldn't be seen as a pushover, either; this first solo confrontation was going to be key. He might not have John's experience behind bars, but he didn't need anyone to tell him that apparent weakness was no protection when faced with a bully determined to assert their position.

"Can I help you?" he asked, throwing an unhurried glance back over his shoulder.

His guest was the lone watcher from earlier, the one who'd stared as he walked by. The stranger still didn't look hostile, but he definitely wanted _something_ if he'd tracked Tom all that way.

"Perhaps," the gentleman replied, tilting his head thoughtfully. He spoke English with a slight accent; not quite British or Australian. Maybe South African? "Back there, you said that you were ... unlucky. But you do not act — or dress — like one who relies on luck."

He'd been in the square then, too. Tom had to admit, he probably did look suspiciously clean and well-fed, compared to someone who'd been living in a place like this ever since the Volm left Earth, regardless of his idle worries about laundry. He supposed that was what passed for a first world problem, these days.

"I guess that depends on how you define 'luck'," he said carefully, keeping his hands easily visible. "I _was_ unlucky enough to draw the attention of a particular Overlord a couple years ago, and escaped when he meant to kill me. Then I compounded the error by allying my group with the Volm when they first arrived. After we turned the Beamers dropping fence posts away from our city, the Espheni must have watched and waited for their opportunity to catch me above ground, hoping to disable Charleston's defenses by removing me. They're going to be very disappointed, if that's the case."

The stranger frowned at that. "I had heard that there was a settlement in Charleston; my last community was visited by a woman in a prop plane over a year ago. But we found her claims difficult to believe, and yours are even more outrageous. I don't suppose you have any way to prove them?"

"I'm afraid they took my weapons, although ..." Tom's brow furrowed as he realized he was still wearing all of the clothes he'd been abducted in, and they didn't seem torn or rumpled. Taking care to move slowly, he slipped his hands into his jacket pockets, and swallowed hard as his questing fingers encountered the slick curved surface of the Volm communicator. He'd taken to carrying the comm everywhere since John and Hal had left, not wanting to miss a call from them or Cochise; he couldn't believe it hadn't been found on him. And if the Espheni hadn't searched far enough to take that ... had they left him anything else of use?

A crinkle betrayed a folded piece of paper in one of his other pockets, and Tom huffed a disbelieving laugh. Of course he'd have one of the _those_ on him; he still thought the damn things were ridiculous, but in the absence of high tech anti-counterfeiting measures and their stringent requirements, his advisors had argued, why _not_ paper certificates with a likeness drawn on them? Literally drawn: there was a guy in the administration whose _sole job_ now was to sketch illustrations by hand for people who'd grown up with computerized 3D imaging technology.

"I don't know if I'd call this proof; more like an embarrassment. But, here." He pulled one of the slips of paper slowly back out of his pocket, gesturing with it toward the stranger.

The other man took it, glancing perfunctorily down at the rectangular shape — then looked again, sharply, glancing between Tom and the New US Credit bill. "This is ... you?"

"Unfortunately," Tom replied, grinning ruefully. "I told them it should be Manchester, because he's the one that made sure the settlement there was more than just a militia in the first place, or even Porter, because there wouldn't have _been_ any Boston militias without him. But they insisted — for the same reason George Washington was on the one dollar bill, or so they claimed. But it was only after I was elected that the city managed to get a semi-functioning economy up and running as more than just a barter system again, so ... yeah. Tom Mason, at your service, though I still answer easier to 'Professor' than I ever will to 'President'."

That wasn't to say he hadn't reconciled himself to the new title over the last couple of months; he was even reluctantly fond of some of its variants, particularly John's 'no-shit President of the New United States'. But those were stories for another time. His babble seemed to have served its purpose already; the stranger looked much more open and less suspicious, now.

"Just how many survivors _are_ there in Charleston?" the man asked, incredulously.

"Somewhere between five and six thousand now," Tom shrugged. He was well aware of what those numbers would sound like; that was as much and more as all the original Massachusetts militias together, before they'd been split apart and whittled down to under two hundred by time and Espheni malevolence. A drop in the bucket compared to pre-invasion populations, but more than most survivors they'd found had ever expected to see again. "I wish I could be more precise, but it's been a couple of months since we last took a census, and not everyone wants to identify themselves to the government. Given the givens, we usually just mark those down as officially unnamed residents, but I think some of them are either getting double-counted or not counted at all."

The stranger whistled lowly, shaking his head. "Perhaps I'm a fool, but — I cannot believe anyone would make up a lie that outrageous," he said, handing back the note. "I don't suppose you'd have any use for an electrical lineman in that city of yours? Dingaan Botha."

It was Tom's turn to widen his eyes. "Actually, believe it or not, we just might. We've only got the one guy in Charleston running our entire power plant, and he has other responsibilities as well — he'd be _thrilled_ to have some assistance, particularly given the demand created by the continuing expansion of our population. One of the _many_ points of stress in the lashup we're currently calling a government. We have quite a few people who left their white collar jobs behind to become warriors, but there are some interesting gaps among the nuts and bolts professions."

"Then I think perhaps we might have something to talk about," Dingaan smiled back, extending a hand for a quick, firm shake. "This is not the first alien prison I have been in, you see; I escaped from the one in Richmond, before a black hornet found me again and brought me here. If I can get us out, can you keep us free?"

If his new friend was telling the truth — that was _terrific_ news. "I can't absolutely guarantee anything, until I can contact my people. But after that — yes. The Espheni had to make a special effort to get me this time; it won't happen that way again. How do you propose to get us out?"

Tom didn't like the idea of leaving so many people behind in captivity — but this wasn't Charleston, the people here weren't the Second Mass, and he had to get back _to_ the Second Mass before he would have the resources to be able to free everyone else, anyway.

"Very carefully," Dingaan replied with a smirk. "But the details can wait — they'll be dropping food in a few moments, and I've only been here a few days longer than you have. If we miss the drop, no one will save anything for a newcomer, and food isn't so plentiful that we can afford to miss a meal."

Tom could understand that; even in Charleston, even now, they didn't have enough that they could afford to waste even a crumb. If he never saw another starving child, it would be too soon. "Lead the way," he said, gesturing back over the path of footprints marked out in silhouettes of grey and red dust.

* * *

Dinner turned out to be a single can of Spam, salvaged from a bag full of preserved food dropped from a Beamer. Tom had never been a big fan of the processed meat, but it was still in date, and it was better than some things he'd had to eat over the last couple of years; he still smiled every time he remembered John's diatribe about canned goods stashes and the apparent ubiquity of tuna. In a way, opening that can also felt like a back-handed victory; after turning them away from grocery store after dry-goods warehouse early on in the resistance, when he'd still been mostly just a scout for the militia, the Espheni were being forced to give up all that jealously guarded food after all. Sometimes, it really was the little things.

Dingaan ate a can of refried beans, and apologized in advance with a wry grin. Tom really hadn't expected to make a new friend that day, and he still wasn't just going to trust the man out of hand, but he already appreciated Dingaan's pragmatism and sense of humor. He'd be a good addition to Charleston if he really could do what he promised.

Once they were done eating, Dingaan graciously showed him to a relatively cozy retreat on the second floor of a half-destroyed building to continue their conversation. One corner of the former office space, twice the size of a standard bedroom, was open to the evening sky; there was enough ceiling left to keep the sleeping corner dry, however, and the damage seemed to have kept other prisoners from coveting the space. It was better than he'd had a time or two on the hike south from Boston, not to mention his plane crash adventure, so Tom wasn't about to complain about his new friend's hospitality. His definition of 'luxury' was highly context dependent of late.

Dingaan had furnished the room with a couple of chairs; one of them had clearly seen some recent use, but the other was still thickly layered in dust. He brushed at it perfunctorily with a worn sleeve, then gestured Tom toward it. Almost without thinking, Tom checked the position of the ceiling breach and the door, orienting the chair so he could keep an eye on both; then he sat down, gratefully taking the weight off his feet.

"So. Tell me about your escape."

Dingaan took a seat in the other chair, leaning forward to brace his weight on his elbows as he took a deep breath and began to explain. "There are many differences between the two camps I've seen — but many similarities as well, the most important of which is the green barrier."

Tom nodded. "They tried to set up a similar barrier in Charleston, but we were able to drive them away before they could complete it. And our scouts have seen a fence like that around downtown Charlotte, as well."

"It vaporizes anyone who touches it. But it is based upon electricity, and I know electricity. Do you know the concept of a Faraday cage?"

The word sounded familiar, like something Tom might have read in a science fiction novel, but not enough for him to define it. "Sorry, I taught history, not physics," he shrugged.

"A Faraday cage, or Faraday suit in this case, is an enclosure formed by conductive material or by a mesh of such material, used to block electric fields," Dingaan explained. "I made a sort of armor based on this principle — strips of metal attached to an insulating fabric to cover as much of the body as possible, including a helmet. It's not perfect; it's impossible to shield _every_ square centimeter of skin, given the need to grasp things and breathe, and the limitation on available materials means it will begin to fall apart right away. You can't just put the suit on and walk through the wall. But it _will_ protect you long enough to climb one of the fence posts, if you are quick."

Tom tried to imagine gambling his _life_ on whether or not a scientific principle learned in theory would save his ass in a real situation; brave man. Although he supposed that was more or less what he'd done with _historical_ principles, the very beginning of his involvement with the Second Mass. His original thesis — that making the occupation difficult enough for the invaders would eventually drive them away — might not have been proven, but the facts of Charleston's situation otherwise more than spoke for themselves.

"How long will it take to construct a suit for both of us?" he asked. It didn't sound particularly complex — but finding the materials, and assembling them in secrecy, would probably be more difficult.

Dingaan shrugged. "I think I have enough fabric already," he said, nodding to a mound in one corner that Tom had taken for torn curtains at first glance. "And the tools to make them. I've secured enough strips of metal for one suit, as well. We will need enough for another, two helmets, and copper enough to wind around both suits. It is not a great amount of material — the challenge is locating it, not assembling it. We could find it right away, or it could take many days."

"We don't have many days — or, at least, I don't. The Espheni in the zeppelin up there gave me a forty-eight hour deadline before they force me to make a choice I have no intention of making." Tom nodded at the hole in the sky, noting absently that the moon was up, and nearly full; it would be fairly bright out until it set. "Have you asked anyone else if they know where to find the materials you need?"

Dingaan grimaced. "I did not wish to make anyone suspicious, and I had little to trade in any case. But if you're on a deadline, it might be worth it to try. And the search will go more quickly, with two of us."

"All right, then. Tomorrow," Tom nodded, then glanced back up at the sky again.

Despite what he now knew — that humanity was far from alone in the universe, and that one of those sparks of light out there had given birth to a superpredator even deadlier than they were — it still _looked_ the same from down below. The stars still shone; the moon still rose and set, looking down on every member of his family.

 _The moon_. Tom froze as he remembered the vision he'd experienced before waking on the Espheni ship, and narrowed his eyes at the bright, gibbous shape hanging above. If that visitation really had been a message from the Dorniya — what had they been trying to tell him? What did they want him to see?

"Tom? Is something wrong?" he heard Dingaan ask.

"I'm sure it's nothing, it's just ..." he began, then sucked in a sharp breath as something _did_ change. A brilliant green dot appeared on the surface of the moon, held for a breath, then blinked out as swiftly as it had come. "Did you see that?"

"What, the moon?" Dingaan replied, skeptically.

"No; there was something _on_ the moon," Tom shook his head. That color — it had been almost the same shade as the fence. That had to mean something, didn't it?

"I don't see —"

"Just give it a minute," Tom insisted. There was no way he'd just happened to look up at the one and only time that was going to happen; even in a world where aliens had advanced predictive abilities and/ or ESP, that was unlikely. But it couldn't be something that had been there ever since the invasion, either; _someone_ would have noticed something long before now. Unless he was going crazy; he wouldn't bet against that, either.

He waited, and waited, counting slowly under his breath — then almost at the minute mark exactly, the green dot appeared again, bright and unmistakable. "There!" Accounting for the scattering effect of the atmosphere, it was probably a lot smaller than it looked at the source, but even so ... if that light originated _on_ the moon, how powerful would it have to be for them to see it all the way down on Earth?

Dingaan swore under his breath. " _Lasers_ ," he said, vehemently. "Of course."

"What?" Tom frowned at him.

"I had wondered how they could power these walls, and all the beamers and mechs, when everything was at a standstill such a short time ago! But there are theories — before all this happened, NASA had been researching the idea of beaming power down from solar satellite collectors for years, based on Nikola Tesla's theories. We know wireless power transfer is at least possible on the small scale; people were working on charging stations for personal electronics that didn't require plugs, that sort of thing, before the invasion. There! Sixty seconds, just about," he concluded, pointing up at the moon. "They would lose better than half of the energy in the atmosphere — but with the help of a few satellites, they could hit the whole _world_ from up there."

Tom swallowed, stomach sinking at the idea. "Do you really think that's possible?"

It would explain a _lot_ about the Espheni's sudden and rapid re-expansion ... but at the expense of putting a solution to the problem _way_ out of humanity's reach. Did the Volm even have any spaceworthy craft still on Earth? He'd have to ask Cochise, but he thought they'd disassembled most of their single-passenger landing pods to build their bunker. And then there was the fact that this was _proof_ that the dreams weren't just a product of his own imagination; just like when he'd seen the DNA report, he wasn't sure whether to feel relieved that he wasn't going crazy, or terrified of what it meant for the future.

"The technology may be far beyond our grasp — but the theory? We've known its potential for more than a hundred years," Dingaan shook his head. "It's obvious, now that — ah, there it is again; definitely a regular pulse. My only question is why now; why didn't they set this system up from the beginning? Did they think they wouldn't need it? Or did it merely take that long to construct?"

"I don't suppose it matters either way," Tom shrugged. "What matters now is getting past the fence."

"True, true," Dingaan sighed. "Well — you're welcome to sleep here, if you like; there isn't much in the way of amenities, but it's better than anything else you're likely to find before nightfall."

"That sounds great, actually — though, do you mind if I stretch my legs first?" Both for the reason Dingaan was likely to assume — it wasn't as though the structure had any running water — and to give him a chance to use the communicator in private.

"You hardly need my permission," Dingaan chuckled, shaking his head. " _Mister_ President."

"Didn't I tell you? Call me Tom," he grinned back, then headed for the doorway. "Back soon; and thanks again."

* * *

He tried the communicator he'd left with John first, but neither John nor Hal, who'd used it to speak to him last, answered. He tried not to let that worry him. The last he'd seen of them, they'd both been alive; but they were both sure to be very busy, given the attack Charleston had just repelled.

He gave it a few minutes, then switched the frequency and tried Cochise next. There were times his scout team was in a position where he couldn't answer, but fortunately, that wasn't the case that night.

"Professor Mason. It is good to hear from you," the Volm answered, immediately.

Tom gave a low, relieved laugh. "Better than you know, my friend. The Espheni sent a lightning raid against Charleston — I'm in the prison camp at Greensboro, now. Fortunately, they didn't empty out my pockets."

Cochise said something pungent in his own language. "Was anyone else captured?"

"No, don't worry. It's just me. I think they followed a group of refugees to us; the remains of the Keystone group. John found them while he was out scouting. They said Hathaway was taken to one of these camps as well, but it must be Richmond, because I haven't seen anyone I recognize here."

Something else to think about later — had they offered a similar deal to the one they'd offered him to Hathaway? Could it be Hathaway who'd tipped the Espheni off where his people would have gone? Tom hoped not; the last thing the city's morale needed was to find out the last leader of the old order had turned collaborator.

"I am sorry, Professor. I am afraid I will be very little help; we have not yet discovered a way to circumvent the green barriers, short of flying over them."

"That's all right; I made a new friend today who might know a way out. That's not why I called. Look. Last week, when we talked — you said you'd figured the Espheni had constructed a new power source, but you were having trouble tracing its location."

"That is correct," Cochise replied, with a sigh. "We have determined that it produces a measurable increase in background microwave radiation on the planet's surface; unfortunately, we have yet to discover a way to track that radiation to its source."

"Radiation ...?" Tom blinked, momentarily knocked off course by the specter of the defense grid. "Is it harmful?"

"It is less than a quarter of the average electromagnetic radiation absorbed from the sun," Cochise said. "It is not enough to be harmful to the Volm; I thought it unlikely to be more harmful to humanity. Though of course, we can breathe chlorine, where you cannot, so my supposition may be in error; I should have mentioned it sooner."

Tom blew out a breath, scrubbing a hand over his face in relief. "No, no; that's all right. The important thing is — I think I know why you're having such a hard time tracking it."

"Oh?" Cochise perked up at that. "What have you discovered, Professor?"

Tom cleared his throat, glancing up at the sky and counting in his head. "Are you outside? If you are, then look up right ... now."

Puzzled silence was the only answer from the comm for several long seconds ... followed by a lengthier spate of Volm cursing that made him wish the device had a recording function.

"Yeah, that was about my reaction," he replied with a dry chuckle. "I don't suppose you have any spaceships still hanging around somewhere we could use?"

"Unfortunately, we do not," Cochise replied, grimly. "I will have to contact my father for assistance — but these smaller communicators are not adequate to reach the greater Volm fleet. I shall have to return to the master cache and unearth the long range unit; it may take some days to accomplish, and a high-power transmission of that nature will be difficult to conceal."

Tom grimaced; he supposed that answered the question of why the transmitter was buried in the first place. "I'd like to say that I wouldn't ask you to risk yourself for this, but given how important the power source is ..."

"Even if you did, I would insist," Cochise confirmed, then paused. "Before I inform my team of our change in course ... I have news for you as well. In our recent search, we encountered a school populated by what I must assume are children from the nearest detention camp. They were all of eligible age, but I observed none with harnesses; they wore uniforms instead, and chanted nonsensical words about brotherhood with the Espheni at the behest of one of their number. The buildings were fenced, and guarded by mechs and Skitters."

An appalled shudder worked its way up Tom's spine. Just how long had the Espheni spent studying the planet before they invaded, anyway? "It seems they're taking inspiration from the worst of Earth's history again; the Hitler Youth, this time. Brainwashing the kids to get to the last hold-outs among the adults."

Teaching them to love the shining wire; his kids would have understood that, he thought. But anyone could break, given enough grooming and pressure — he was so, so grateful that none of them had ended up in that situation. He was a terrible role model, there, too; always rescued or able to escape before it came to that point, the worst of the consequences heaped on other people's shoulders. Hopefully, they wouldn't ever have to find that out the hard way — like the kids in those camps were, right now. One more worry for the post-war future.

"I _am_ sorry, Tom Mason."

"No, no, don't be — at least we know they're alive," he replied, wincing. "And that they'll probably stay that way until the Espheni have done whatever it is they're planning to do to all the adults they're rounding up. Let's just hope your father gets your message before things get that far — or we find some other way to reach the moon."

"I will do so," Cochise confirmed, solemnly. "You are certain you do not require more immediate assistance?"

"No, I'm good. The news about the power source is definitely more important than waiting around to escort me out of this place. Though if you hear from my family before I do — let them know I'm all right?"

"I will do so. I wish you luck in your escape; I will contact you again once the transmission has been sent."

"Thank you, Cochise," Tom replied, equally solemnly, then sighed and signed off.

* * *

His sleep was shallow and fragmented that night. Tom had been expecting that: new place, new worries, new company. There'd been studies done in the old days about how it took at least two nights in a new situation before the human brain fully shut down in rest, and adding all the current stressors on top of that was too much for even his exhaustion-trained sleep habits. He gave in about halfway through and sat watch for the rest of the night, staring up at the sky and racking his brains for ways to trade nothing for something.

It had sounded like copper was the most critical fail point in Dingaan's plan, and the people who'd been in the camp since the walls went up would have a much better idea than he would where to find the wiring or piping or whatever they'd need to strip to get it. But could they mine that resource without anyone figuring out what they were up to? Regardless of the odds, he didn't exactly have much choice.

He sighed, watching the thin clouds slowly scudding over the stars, and thought about his family. How they'd finally turned a corner with his daughter's condition, and how proud he was of his sons. And John. If John was there too, he would probably ...

The thought trailed off as Tom quirked a smile. If John was there, _he'd_ be the one they'd need to go to; the one who either knew where everything was, or knew who would know. Whether he could be persuaded to help a stranger would be another story, of course. And if he _did_ have copper to hand, he'd probably be using it to make some new brewing system to keep his control over the drinking business, not saving it against a rainy day.

...Could that be his angle? Tell the people talked to that he was planning to make alcohol? Moonshine, to blunt the sharp teeth of the cold nights and make the wasteland of their daily lives a little more bearable. Now _that_ might be an idea they might even be willing to extend credit on. Tom hated to tell a blatant lie for his own gain, but he would do _anything_ to get back to his family, and if the Volm _did_ manage to hit the power station on the moon thanks to his intel, they'd all be free soon anyway.

There were no perfect choices here; only the least worst. And if his life had taught him one thing, it was how to make the most of what he'd been given.

He pinged the communicator one more time before daybreak, when his host stirred and closed the window of privacy. There was no immediate response that time either, though given the early hour he still refused to jump to conclusions. Hal had probably left the thing in a jacket pocket while he and his girlfriend reintroduced themselves to showers and clean sheets; there was no point borrowing trouble just yet.

Dingaan laughed ruefully when Tom laid out his plan, proclaiming it worthy of a politician indeed. For once, though, Tom didn't mind the comparison; it was a use for those skills that he _didn't_ have to feel guilty for. They struck out with the first several people they approached — some uninterested, some unable, and some too untrusting to help — but it was only a matter of time before they turned up a guy who knew a guy who'd worked maintenance in the area before the explosions, and had an idea where to find a bike shop as well. The bikes themselves had long since disappeared, but helmets still thronged the dark, dusty shelves in plenty.

There were other hazards in the camp besides uncooperative human beings, of course; Skitter patrols were a regular presence, and the ship slowly circled the entire perimeter of the camp, focusing its cameras on any event of interest. They seemed to ignore humans cooperating with each other, or keeping out of each other's way; but any hint of a struggle or suspicious activity, and alien attention would descend on the unfortunates below. He even witnessed a hornet fly down to pull one particularly argumentative guy away; he'd been fighting over the last can of creamed corn with a young woman carrying a child too small to be useful to the Espheni.

Tom didn't want to know where that guy had gone; he paid careful attention to the patrol patterns, and to Dingaan's stories of the things he'd seen, moving the copper stocks they found from doorway to doorway carefully between circuits of the ship's cameras. It would be even more of a problem when they actually had to approach the fence, so better to learn the timing in the day before it became a question of survival that night.

In many ways, those hours reminded him a lot of the earliest days of the Second Mass: dodging aliens he didn't yet know how to predict or efficiently kill, approaching people raw from fresh loss to convince them that what he asked of them would benefit their future as much as his. Only this time, he didn't have his family with him, nor any orders to follow other than his own. He was very glad he'd already found an ally and made a plan; being locked up on his own for any longer than a couple of days was not likely to be very good for his mental health.

Once again, he was struck by the sheer cruelty of the setup; it was more even than a mostly-logical and unromantic mindset could really justify. The Espheni clearly had the capacity to understand human behavior on a macro scale, even if the finer details of emotion-based cause and effect occasionally escaped them; that suggested their own motivations should be roughly intelligible in return. But the only rationale Tom could think of was, frankly, even more terrifying than the idea that they _didn't_ mean anything to the star-faring species. That they _did_ mean something to them ... and that that something was entirely negative.

How could they possibly defeat an enemy so much more advanced than they were if the material benefit was only the bonus — if the whole _purpose_ in coming had been to erase them from the face of the Earth? Somehow, he didn't think there was the equivalent of a death star exhaust port just waiting for a lucky rebel to fire a torpedo through, here; or if there was, no one had yet managed to slip the plans to the resistance.

Tom dismissed that train of thought with some difficulty, prying open a can of water chestnuts for that evening's bare bones meal and taking direction from Dingaan on putting his suit together. It didn't make a very satisfying supper, not nearly enough of it and far too bland, but at least it crunched satisfyingly between his teeth while he 'sewed' wire through the backing material to secure larger pieces of metal together like a jigsaw puzzle.

"Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof," he muttered, shaking a pricked finger and sucking away a drop of blood that welled to the surface.

"Hmm?" Dingaan looked up from his own work, wrinkling his brow at Tom.

"Oh — nothing. What do you think, will this work?" He crimped the last bit of wire into place, then held up the torso piece for Dingaan's perusal.

Dingaan eyed it thoughtfully, then nodded, flashing a wry smile at him. "I think it is — you would say, close enough for government work?"

Tom gave a rusty chuckle, nodding back to him as he set the armor back on the floor. "What now, then?"

"Finish the helmet — then stow the pieces in the duffel bag from the bike shop, and we'll take a walk down to the fence after dark," Dingaan shrugged.

"Just like that?"

"Just like that. It's not complicated; only a matter of life and death," he snorted. "I'd worry more about what comes next: getting _away_ from the camp once we are outside it. So now that I have shared my plan — will you share yours?"

Tom tilted his head at him, thinking that through. "And if I said I'd prefer to have proof the suits work before revealing that information?" he asked, keeping the question light rather than confrontational.

"And if I prefer to be certain there will be more than a trap waiting for me on the other side?" Dingaan replied with lifted eyebrows. "I am sure the details of my escape would be valuable to our captors."

"Fair enough," Tom admitted with a nod. "We've got to trust each other at some point; that's the only way we get out of this. So why not now?"

He reached into his pocket, then pulled out the communicator and thumbed it on. "Hal? John? Anyone there?"

Dingaan's eyes widened at the sight of the comm. "That's no alien technology I've ever seen — but it's not human either. Is it from the Volm I've heard about?" he asked.

"Yep." The comm made a faint staticky noise; Tom nodded to Dingaan, then transmitted again. "Hal? John ...?"

"...Dad?!" Hal's voice transmitted back. There was a rhythmic metallic sound in the background, punctuating a loud rushing noise, but the words came through clearly enough. "Holy shit! Where are you? Are you all right?"

Tom sat back in his chair, relief rushing through him at the sound of his son's voice. "In Greensboro, actually. Looks like my scouting days aren't completely behind me after all."

"Just wait 'til Marina hears about this," Hal laughed in disbelief. "Forget about getting out of the office ever again. Wait — you're in the prison there? Then how'd you get your hands on the comm? Are you out already?"

"I think that would be a little quick, even for me," Tom replied, shaking his head. "Would you believe they took my guns, and the knife off my belt, but didn't search my pockets?"

"You're kidding me," Hal laughed again. "God. _Dad_. You have no idea how good it is to hear your voice. Lexie completely freaked, and Pope spent most of the last day ripping strips off people with his tongue and staging an armed occupation of the kitchen."

The mention of Lexie worried him, but asking if it had something to do with her abilities probably wasn't wise with a stranger listening in on his end, and who knew how many others on Hal's. He could easily imagine John's behavior, though; and for once, reports of his prickly obstinance only filled Tom with relief. "John's all right, then? I thought I saw him get back up — but he fell pretty far."

"Yeah, he's fine. Limping a little, but he got the all-clear from Anne. Some of the rest of us are banged up a little, but not bad, and we only lost a few — mostly Marshall's people, and you. It'll be a few days before we can get to Greensboro, though; we were sort of hoping you were in Charlotte. D'you think Cochise could help?"

Oh; was _that_ what that noise was, in the background of Hal's voice — a railcar, clacking along at a good clip. "Dan went ahead with the plan, then?"

"After Pope yelled at everyone for awhile," Hal snorted. "We're on our way now; we'll be there sometime after nightfall. I'm here with Maggie and about half the Berserkers; Pope's at the front of the train with Lyle, Anthony, and Weaver, and Ben's in the back with the rebel Skitters. Most of Captain Marshall's people are with us as well, and the rest of the Second Mass fighters. We're expecting to get ambushed, once they realize where we're headed, but we've got enough firepower we should be able to blow right through them."

Dingaan made a disbelieving noise at that; Tom shrugged at him, then continued. "Bring any alternate transportation along?"

"'Course we did; just like when we went to Jacksonville. Just in case. Why?"

Tom grinned. "Cochise is busy elsewhere — but I made a new friend, too. An electrical lineman; he's figured out a way over the fence. Sounds like we'll be climbing our way out of here around the same time you're taking Charlotte. I know it's ninety miles or so, but —"

There was a scrabble of noise, and then another voice: Maggie's; Hal must have dropped the comm. "Are you _serious_ , Tom? We ought to change _your_ name to Houdini. Yeah, of course we'll set out the minute the shooting stops. You'll be okay in the woods 'til we get there?"

"Better than trying to walk all that way, that's for sure," he admitted.

"Yeah, I get that," Maggie chuckled. "Put your friend on, would you — no, get off me, Hal, like you wouldn't do it too if you weren't so busy being Mason Junior."

Somehow, Tom didn't think she'd meant him to hear that last part, but he handed the comm over to Dingaan anyway with a lifted eyebrow. "Touch here, to transmit."

Dingaan shook his head, then thumbed the button. "Ah — this is Dingaan Botha? Of Phoenix Utilities, Johannesburg."

"Well, Dingaan Botha of Phoenix Utilities, Johannesburg: my name's Maggie, of the Second Massachusetts Militia. Currently of Charleston. I've got a lot of armed and motivated soldiers here, and _you've_ got precious cargo. Take care of the second, and you won't end up on the wrong end of the first, you hear me?"

Dingaan chuckled again, in disbelief. "Yes, I hear you. I feel a bit like I wandered into someone else's hero's journey when I wasn't looking; but, I hear you."

"Don't worry, you'll get used to it. I look forward to meeting you tomorrow," she said, tone only half a threat; and then there was a rustle of noise again, as someone else scrambled for the comm.

"We'll _all_ be wishing you luck, sir — and we'll pass this on to Pope soon's the train stops, don't worry," Tector came on the line.

Tom shook his head, warmed by everyone's concern. "Better wait 'til the fight's over — getting distracted's the reason I'm here in the first place, I'd just as soon we don't add any complications to this particular rescue," he replied, then cleared his throat. "And — thanks, Tec. Keep an eye on my boys for me?"

"You know I will," Tector replied. Then Hal filched the comm back.

"Good luck, Dad. See you tomorrow."

"Good luck to you, too," Tom replied, then took a deep breath. "Mason, out."

"Well?" he added, tucking the comm away as he glanced at Dingaan, lines crinkling around his eyes. "Satisfied?"

Dingaan shook his head. "I don't know if _satisfied_ is the word for it. Amazed, perhaps." He didn't say that despite deciding to trust, he'd been taking Tom's claims with a grain of salt — but he didn't have to; it was only common sense. "I think I look forward to meeting these friends of yours. That was your son?"

"My eldest, yeah; and his girlfriend, and that last was our best sniper. A good friend," Tom nodded.

"And this — John you asked for? They mentioned him several times, as well, under another name," Dingaan observed, curiously.

"John Pope is ... complicated. But the short answer is, he's my ... partner, I guess I'd say. Or boyfriend; though that sounds ridiculous to me for a pair of guys in their forties." Tom wrinkled his nose.

He didn't ask whether that would be a problem; he didn't think it necessary. Dingaan seemed the type to have a much more practical grasp on his priorities.

"New relationship, then, I take it?" Dingaan replied casually, proving him right.

Tom chuckled. "By way of having been friendly enemies for a couple of years first? Pretty much. Like I said ... complicated." He thought about saying more, but cut himself off there; no need to offer a further apologia to someone unacquainted with any of the other parties involved. A lot of people had a right to be pissed at John; it would be nice to have a friend who didn't.

Dingaan nodded at that, an amused quirk at the corner of his mouth. "Too wise to woo peaceably, eh?"

Tom was in the middle of taking a swig out of a water bottle when the Shakespeare reference registered, and he choked, hastily coughing into his fist. _I pray thee now tell me, for which of my bad parts did thou first fall in love with me?_ "Maybe. Anyway. Moving on ... what do you think, just after moonset sound like a good time?"

"Should be. I know the patrol schedules; there'll be several seconds when no Skitters are in sight and the ship's over the far side of the compound. From there, it'll just be a matter of making it to the fence and waiting for another window. It'll be a bit of a lightshow — that can't be helped — but it'll take them some time to get a crew outside the fence to look for us. Particularly if the boss upstairs is a bit distracted by other nearby events." Dingaan jerked his thumb toward the roof.

Tom grinned at him. "Sounds like a plan, then," he said. About as much of one as he ever had, at least.

"Sounds like a plan," Dingaan agreed, then stood and stretched the kinks out of his back. "All we have left to do is ... wait."

-(7/10)-


	8. Gathering Together

_"They were not a numerous people then; their numbers were not equal to the numbers of the tribes. There were just a few of them on the mountain, their fortress, so when it was said that the tribes had planned death for them, all of them gathered together."_  
— Popul Vuh, Part Four

* * *

It was almost a relief when the klieg lights came on and the hum and stomp of Mega-mechs sounded from the tracks in front of the train. John had never been a big fan of waiting.

"It's about time!" he yelled, firing the big Volm gun out the window at the nearest of the incoming droids.

The energy bolts were scaled up to take down Beamers; the shot was a solid enough hit — _damn_ he was good — to send the mech staggering back, one of its weapon arms blown off at the shoulder. A second shot from the top of the next train car back — one of the spiked kids, probably, braced up there and waiting all this time — struck it a few seconds later, taking out a leg; it collapsed on its back, twitching, as the train rattled on.

"Uh, Cap, should we start throttling back?" he heard Anthony ask behind him.

Weaver's response was vehemently negative; John could see the colonel's fierce battle-grin out of the corner of his eye, though the exact words were drowned out by the cacophony of shouts and energy weapons waking down the length of the train behind them. The rest of the snipers who'd been waiting for their cue were getting their asses in gear; the paltry pack of six mechs really didn't stand a chance against all that. Not unless they threw themselves bodily on the tracks to gum up the works, and that particular method of sabotage apparently hadn't occurred to the Overlord in charge of the blocking force.

Half the mechs were out of commission, and the rest temporarily knocked back, by the time the train's engine carried them out of range; whoops of elation went up from several of the other cars as they passed them by.

"That's the first hurdle, passed. Someone tell the good doc it's time to spool up the BFG!" John chuckled, leaning back in and bracing himself against the train car's wall. He'd brought the cane, but he hadn't been using it; he'd needed both hands for the Volm weapon. His ankle and backside were both starting to ache again despite the ibuprofen he'd been taking, but he'd refused to take something stronger and risk knocking himself out of the fight.

"Already done; or don't you feel that?" Weaver grimaced, glancing down at the floor.

Now that he was paying attention, yeah, John did feel it: a low vibration getting stronger by the minute and easier to separate from the train's natural motion. "How much longer to the fence?"

"Not much longer," Lyle said, squinting out the front windows. " _Now_ it's time to start throttling back."

John stuck his head out the window again as they went about that business, narrowing his eyes at the smudge of livid green light approaching in the near distance.

He heard Weaver throw the brakes, and braced himself as the train started to slow and the sound of the grid gun grew louder under the noise of screeching metal. Ready or not, there they were. Time to rock and roll.

* * *

The sight of the Espheni ship going down in flames like a latter-day Hindenburg was a thing of beauty to behold. So, in its own nasty way, was the wave of rebel Skitters breaking over the line that had previously been the fence, sweeping away all the six-legged prison guards charging toward the train from the ruined city center. It hadn't been that long since killing Skitters and their masters had been the only thing he'd lived for; John let the tide of battle carry away all his aches, worries, and frustrations, narrowing his focus down to the next mech to fall under his fire and the next batch of terrified looking refugees needing an escort back to the nearest empty train car.

He even found a satisfactory use for the mech-metal RPG he'd brought, when a cloud of hornets joined the fray and stooped low over the crowd, like they meant to salvage as many prisoners as they possibly could. It wasn't the primary intended use for the thing — the whole purpose of sheathing a rocket propelled grenade with the alien alloy was so it could penetrate the armored surfaces of the aliens' machines — but it did make for an absolutely _glorious_ show when it detonated. There wasn't much left of the one it hit, and the cloud of razor-edged, unstoppable shrapnel that followed bit the heart out of the pack; only a few bugs escaped unscathed. The rest exploded in a rain of limbs and black-blooded gore just beyond the hurrying crowd of cringing refugees.

Tick, tick, _boom_. He doubted he'd ever get tired of _that_ part of the job.

Such a plan as there was hadn't survived the shock of battle; it rarely did. But the broad strokes of it went off with barely a hitch. There probably a few stubborn hold-outs somewhere in the ruins, but the majority of the refugees had been roused by either the bullhorns or the firefight and had mostly filed eagerly into the emptied train cars by the time half an hour had passed. John caught glimpses of Marshall's people carefully guarding the loading points, scanning the faces of every thin, dirty, exhausted survivor they boosted into the cars; presumably looking for any of their missing, though he couldn't tell if they'd found any. His own people — and wouldn't his brother have mocked him, if Billy had lived to hear him claim them — stayed mostly out on the bleeding edge, seeking out the least sign of movement and pouring fire into any exposed mech or alien not marked with the rebels' colors.

It wasn't _quite_ like shooting fish in a barrel. But it was the best odds they'd had in a firefight, yet. John still believed that the only way humanity was going to survive long-term was if they either found a magic bullet, or the aliens fucked up royally ... but Tom's plans did seem to have a genuine gift for encouraging and capitalizing on both forms of luck. Chalk up another in the win column, and another few hundred residents for Charleston, SC.

"All right, people, pack it up!" he heard Weaver yelling hoarsely, as the rate of fire began to fall off. "That's everyone we could find, and the scouts have spotted a fresh flight of Beamers inbound from the north! Time to get our behinds out of here before they drop a bomb on us or try to throw another fence across our path!"

The Second Mass began shouldering weapons and hauling ass back toward the train, clapping one another on the back and binding minor wounds as they went. John pressed a hand to his back and grimaced as the adrenaline began to fade, then looked around to do a quick headcount before everyone mounted back up.

The colonel, of course, was in one piece, up by the used-to-be-back of the train, where the reverse-pointing engine would now be leading the way home. Lyle was still close to John, checking his gear as he waited unobtrusively for him to decide what he was doing next; John had never quite figured out what he'd done to earn that degree of loyalty, but he surely had grown to appreciate it. He caught a glimpse of the middle Masonet crouched over one of the more-intact hornet corpses, with a Skitter looking on; John stared just long enough to make sure Ben seemed unhurt, before shuddering and moving on. The other Berserkers were over by the train, passing around a flask of some kind as they kept at least one eye and a rifle on the sky at all times. And Mags and Hal were ... huh, calling his name, picking their way through the detritus of the battle in his general direction.

It was pretty damn dark out there since the emerald-city glow of the fence had gone out; the train's lamp and the soldiers' flashlights threw sharp-edged shadows everywhere, and any place out of direct line of sight was shrouded in deep shades of grey and black. It took John a long moment to realize they were having trouble spotting him because he was in one of those deep-shadowed areas ... and another to overcome the sudden temptation to hold back until they gave up and left without him. Who knew how long it would take for Peralta to get up the gumption to try for Greensboro, and the next prison, and the next, until they finally found Tom? Might as well just take Lyle and do it himself. But the thought passed quickly: he had Tanya now, and besides, what was he supposed to do, _limp_ his way more than ninety miles through Skitter-infested country?

He sighed at himself, then stepped forward and waved a hand to catch the battle couple's attention.

" _There_ you are. Where've you been, man?" Hal exclaimed as they zeroed in on him.

John snorted. That was a turn-around; Mason Junior looking _relieved_ to see him. "Contemplating my growth as a human being," he drawled. "Why?"

Hal rolled his eyes. "'Cause we've only got a couple minutes to offload the spare bikes if we're going before the train heads back to Charleston. You in or not?"

"...Excuse me?" John blinked at him. Now that he thought about it, he did remember something about a few extra motorcycles being loaded for purposes TBD; but why bring that up? "I think I must've missed a couple steps in this conversation. You're _encouraging_ me to do the irresponsible thing and take off on my own?"

"Not alone; with me and Maggie, plus I figured one of the Berserkers will be going, too. There's only three bikes — but they can all carry two in a pinch, and it's probably not a good idea for you to be driving with your, ah, bruises and all anyway," Hal said, smirking at him.

"Are you serious?" John asked, incredulously. Not that he wasn't _all over_ that idea — he'd _just_ talked himself out of going alone, after all — but that in itself made him suspicious. "Where are we even going to go? Unless you've suddenly had some psychic vision of where we're going to find your father ..."

"Better," Hal's smirk grew into a shit-eating grin, and he pulled a familiar little piece of Volm tech out of his pocket. "They forgot to frisk my dad. He called in. He's breaking out of Greensboro tonight, and asked if we could pick him up on our way home."

John caught the comm as Hal tossed it over to him, a wave of relief nearly sending him to his knees. "Tom called in? He's all right?"

"Even made a new friend. Ask him yourself — once we get the bikes offloaded. They aren't gonna shift themselves, and Weaver's anxious to get out of here."

John clutched the comm to his chest, and threw a glance at Lyle. "What do you think, Lyle? Feel like taking another road trip?"

"'Course, Boss." Lyle adopted a thoughtful expression. "Better be quick, though; bikes put out less heat than trucks, but noise carries, and the fishheads aren't gonna be distracted for long."

"We aren't planning to stop for anything but fuel," Maggie nodded to him. "So you're in, Pope?"

He bared his teeth in an anticipatory grin. "You really gotta ask?"

"Just checking," she grinned back. "Let's go!"

* * *

It was the work of a moment to rope the other Berserkers into helping lower the bikes from the car behind the grid gun; Weaver glowered at them and wished them good luck in gruff tones, and the others clapped them all on the back and told them to bring Tom home before hopping up on the train themselves as it began to roll.

"Tanya's gonna be pissed," John shook his head as Maggie and Hal mounted up. "Littlest Mason, too; promised 'em both I'd be back in the morning."

"Somehow, I think they'll understand," Hal replied, wryly. "Weaver'll tell 'em what's up. Or Tector; he was there when Dad called in. Besides, we can take a more direct way back, and the bikes go faster than the train; we won't be all that far behind if we don't run into any major obstacles."

"Yeah, speaking of which — you said he was going to be _escaping_ tonight? _Before_ we get there?" John shook his head, bemused. Man, the miracles that guy could pull from his ass, when push came to shove; like the mythical rabbit out of the book he'd given Tanya. Prince with a Thousand Enemies: a trick for every occasion.

"Provided everything goes as planned," Hal shrugged. "Which means, knowing my dad — it _won't_ , but he'll somehow make it anyway, so I'd really like to be there by the time he needs us."

"No need to talk me into it," he said, then gestured with the comm. "Get a move on; me and Lyle will catch up with you in a minute."

"Don't take too long," Maggie cautioned, "or we'll come back for you."

"Now why does that sound more like a threat than a statement of concern?" he replied dryly.

She rolled her eyes, then jerked her chin at her boyfriend in a piece of nonverbal commentary that didn't need translation and took off, headed for the freeway leading north and east out of the city.

She hadn't needed to warn him, really; he didn't much want to be there when the Espheni responded in force to what they'd done in Charlotte that night. But he had the comm, and he had the opportunity; he wasn't moving from that spot until he'd heard Tom's voice for himself.

He cleared his throat, then raised an eyebrow at Lyle; but instead of moving, the man rolled his eyes and crossed his beefy arms over his chest. "You're kidding me right? How's that leg feeling, now you're not all amped up on adrenaline? If it's all the same to you, I want to be sure we can get away quick if we gotta."

John glared at him a moment, but Lyle wasn't going to give, and he didn't feel like trying to force it. Not after the incident with the chalkboard and the entirely awkward meltdown Lyle had handled without a single mocking word. And, all right, the stabbing pain that shot from hip to ankle every time he moved. Tom was going to take great joy in reminding him of any number of things he'd said on that long trek out of the woods on Tom's badly sprained ankle, he just knew it.

" _Fine_ ," he said. "But I don't want to hear one goddamn word about this later on."

"Sure thing, Boss," Lyle said with a smirk, then leaned back against the bike, very obviously settling in to wait.

John sighed, then thumbed the communicator on. "Mason. Tom, you copy?"

A long moment passed; he scratched at his mustache, then keyed it again, chest tightening as he waited for an answer. "Tom. I know you're there, so pick up already. Unless your kid was lying. In which case, you might want to speak up anyway, or his ass is gonna be grass when I catch up with him."

"... _John?_ " The voice that carried back was almost whisper-soft, but John would have known it anywhere. He'd sure spent enough time responding to it, like Pavlov's dog, over the last few years.

He bent forward, bracing one hand against the thigh of his good leg, and took a deep breath. "Thank God. You have no idea how good it is to hear your voice."

Tom chuckled softly. "Oh, I think I do," he replied. "Not quite the reunion I had in mind for after your mission, but I'll take it. You're coming with Hal? I'm guessing the battle went well, then?"

"What do you think? You're the one who planned it," John replied, then frowned. "And of course I'm coming. Something wrong? Why are you whispering?"

"We were almost to the fence when the guards all boiled out of their holes like someone had kicked an anthill — I'm guessing that's when you guys hit Charlotte. We're waiting for the coast to clear before we climb over."

"Climb _over_?" John blurted. Surely he hadn't heard that right. "Did you suddenly go crazy when I wasn't there to stop it? You saw what one of those fences did to Zack!"

"It's a long story," Tom replied. "I made a new friend; an electrical lineman, he's done this before. I'll be fine!"

That was supposed to be reassuring? "That's as may be, but you better make him climb over first. Your kids'll kill me — and _my_ kid'll help — if you get yourself fried just shy of a rescue," John said, vehemently.

"Have a little faith in me, why don't you?"

"It's not faith that's the problem," John growled in return. "You're the one of us that still believes in the power of hope, remember?"

"Yeah, I remember," Tom said, more softly.

What was he supposed to say to that? John cleared his throat, conflicted. Sometimes, it felt like every step he took toward Tom was playing chicken with himself, with his whole life as the stakes; other times, it felt like the easiest thing in the world. In this case, it was definitely more the former than the latter. "So ..."

"So ...?" Tom echoed back.

The faint whine of incoming Beamers interrupted the silence as John struggled to finish the sentence, and he gruffly took the out. "...time's wasting; and I'd rather not get caught any more than you do. See you in a couple of hours," he said, signing off.

Lyle gave a put-upon sigh, then started the bike and patted the seat behind him without further complaint. John grimaced, but tucked the communicator away and climbed on, carefully shifting so he wasn't putting too much weight on the bruised portions of his anatomy. That meant clinging awkwardly to the back of Lyle's jacket — but it wasn't as though he had much dignity left at that point, so he sucked it up and dealt. By the time the flight of Beamers screamed into view overhead, Lyle was opening up the throttle, following in the others' wake.

They'd barely got out of sight range of the former prison when John looked back and saw the craft bank over the city behind them. One by one, the Beamers passed over the prison site, objects falling from their undersides: the glowing orbs of their neutron bombs this time, not more fence posts to replace the ones the Second Mass had taken out. It gave him awful flashbacks to the beginning stages of the war, when they'd thrown energy spheres around at the least provocation, evaporating flesh and frying machinery. He swore quietly as a mushroom of light and heat swelled up from within the boundaries of the deactivated fence, and then turned to watch as the Beamers headed further south along the line of the tracks, not bothering to hang around for further cleanup.

Just as with those harnessed kids at the beginning of the war, they were scorching the earth of any survivors rather than let the humans think they'd got away with their small victory.

"If anyone was still alive in there, they aren't anymore," Lyle observed, scowling at the fresh devastation. "I didn't think they had any of those bombs left."

"Must have built some more. Or saved 'em for a special occasion — they might've been worried about the EMP side-effects interfering with their new power system. Anyway, I think that was probably the point," John replied grimly. "Weaver better be ready."

He could only hope they wouldn't do the same at Greensboro, after Tom got out ... but he wasn't going to bring that up, if no one else did. The last thing he wanted was Tom deciding to stay behind out of some preemptive sense of guilt. It might be cold calculus, but Charleston and the resistance — not to mention John's nearest and dearest — needed Tom Mason a hell of a lot more than some random collection of Espheni prisoners.

Hal and Maggie looked equally grim when they caught up to them a few moments later; probably thinking similar thoughts. Neither one was an idiot. But they didn't speak of it, either.

They rode on in silence, as swiftly as they could manage in the unforgiving dark.

* * *

By the time they were close enough to the center of Greensboro to see the same green glow illuminating the horizon that they'd just extinguished in Charlotte, John was heartily wishing for his cane and half a dozen Vitamin I, or at the very least a flask of scotch. But they were there. He dismounted Lyle's bike on the verge of the leaf- and vehicle-strewn asphalt thoroughfare marked as US 220, just short of a bullet-pocked sign announcing their approach to the Coliseum Area. He hissed at the stretch of strained muscles and tendons, then limped in a stiff circle to get the blood flowing again as he made another call.

"Mason? You there?" he asked, frowning in the direction of the Greensboro fence.

"John? Yeah, I'm here. We — we're here." Tom sounded exhausted; but as continued proof of life went, it was music to John's ears.

John glanced at the signage again, wondering where 'here' was. "We're on the 220 coming into town, just shy of that big cloverleaf. You make it over the fence in one piece?"

"The I-40 interchange?" Tom's voice lifted. "Yeah — the Skitters all went back to their patrol routes about an hour ago, and we climbed one of the posts with no problems. We're just a few hundred yards from there, actually — you said you're on the south side of it?"

"You're _here_? Where?" John turned in place, scanning both sides of the highway — then glanced back toward the soaring span where the highway crossed the interstate. The overpass: extra insurance to block detection from infrared sensors passing overhead. He should've thought of that himself.

"Here," Tom said again — just as a shadow moved against the glow of the city, climbing up alongside the road.

John made a low noise in his throat, lowering the comm to his side — and then Hal Mason caught sight of the same movement he had, jogging forward with his weapon half-raised to either confront or hug the intruder.

"Dad, is that you? _Dad!_ " Hugging, fortunately for all of them, proved to be the order of the day.

"Dad," Hal repeated hoarsely, burying his face in Tom's shoulder. "God. I knew you'd be okay — you're _always_ okay — but it scared the shit out of me, seeing them grab you like that. Never do that again."

The young man's voice was muffled against Tom's dusty coat; Tom had one hand wound in the back of Hal's jacket and another cupping the back of his head, a small smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. "I didn't voluntarily walk onto the ship this time, you know," he said. "But I'll try my best not to get kidnapped again, I promise."

Maggie had followed a few paces behind Hal, her thumbs tucked in her belt loops, shifting her weight a little from foot to foot as she looked on. "Well, that's all anyone can ask, really," she interrupted. Her tone was desert dry, but her expression as soft as John had ever seen it. "Though you gotta admit, it's a pretty bad habit to have, intentional or not. What's it been, a month and a half since the last time we had to come and get you?"

Tom looked up over Hal's shoulder to meet Maggie's teasing words with a wry grin. "What can I say; the Espheni just can't seem to get enough of my company," he joked back, voice thick with emotion.

"Yeah, your milkshake brings _all_ the aliens to the yard," John drawled, moseying over slowly in an effort not to show off his limp. "Well, and at least one human, I guess."

Tom's face did something complicated when he caught sight of him; amusement draining out of those familiar features in favor of something more intense that John was still trying his damnedest not to name.

Hal took the hint fairly quickly, slapping his father's back and then stepping back out of Tom's loosened hold to stand beside Maggie.

"John," Tom greeted him, hoarsely.

John had been trying to keep it professional in front of the others this time, he really had; but the exhausted lines in Tom's face and the wrecked tone of his voice pressed all kinds of buttons John usually liked to pretend he didn't have, and he lurched forward into the professor's embrace, fisting his hands in the back of Tom's jacket.

"You _asshole_ ," he murmured, pressing their foreheads together. "What did I say about going off on one of these trips of yours without backup?"

Tom's fingers had automatically tangled themselves in the layers of John's shirts; he chuckled tiredly, then lifted his head again, dark eyes boring intently into John's. "You say that as if I had any choice in the matter."

" _Tom_ ," John growled at him.

Tom swallowed at that, gaze dipping toward John's mouth. "You said that already," he said, then grinned, teeth flashing dimly in the dark. "Oh wait, you didn't; you insulted me instead, after _weeks_ of keeping your distance and a traumatic experience on my part. Maybe I should take that as a hint ...?"

"You're a pain in the ass, Mason," John growled again, then clashed their mouths together the way he'd been wanting to do since he'd caught sight of him across that bridge a day and a half before.

He could have happily forgotten about everything else in the world at that moment: the fire in his leg, the battle behind them, the enemy mechs and Skitters that would no doubt be patrolling that stretch of road at some point during the night; and their coterie of human onlookers as well. The heat building between them drove the chill out from under his skin and made all the niggling little worries that had been chewing at him since before the Charlotte trip seem irrelevant. But it felt like no time at all before Hal interrupted, clearing his throat.

"Not to spoil the reunion and all, Dad. But we're kind of on a timeline. You said you had someone with you?"

Tom clenched his fingers more tightly in John's shirts, then nodded and sighed, pulling away from the kiss. But he kept one hand on John as he turned to his son, fingers resting on his forearm like he couldn't stand to let go of him. Practically holding hands; another crack in the armor of John's hardened persona. John let it go, though; there seemed increasingly little point to fighting it, at least in Mason's presence.

"Yeah, you're right. Dingaan?" Tom raised his voice a little, calling to his new friend.

"Here." A dark-skinned man melted out of the shadows; about John's height, with a closely trimmed mustache and beard and an appreciative glint in his eyes as he nodded to the group in greeting. Despite the suspicious circumstances of their meeting —seriously, the _one guy_ in Greensboro that could help Tom escape an Espheni prison had just so happened to befriend him within hours of his arrival? — John was inclined to give the stranger the benefit of the doubt. He'd saved Tom. And if he was genuine ... well, they could definitely use another electrical specialist in Charleston. For more than one reason.

"Everyone, this is Dingaan Botha," Tom continued the introduction. "Originally of Phoenix Utilities, Johannesburg; lately of Greensboro, and Richmond before that. Dingaan, this is John; that's Hal and Maggie over there, you spoke with them over the comm several hours ago; and Lyle, John's second. All originally of Boston via the Second Massachusetts, and now of Charleston."

"All family, then," Dingaan replied. "Good to meet you all in person."

"Likewise, man. Thanks for helping my dad," Hal said, stepping forward to shake Dingaan's hand.

"It was no problem. We helped each other," Dingaan replied, easily.

John thought he caught Maggie mouthing something to Dingaan behind Hal's back, with a smirk on her face, but it was too dark to tell what; whatever it was, it made Dingaan incline his head to her, smile widening.

It was all very nice to meet you, new neighbor; friendly and welcoming, almost heart-warming. Except, you know, for the fact that it was still the middle of the night, right next door to a big ol' bunch of hostile Skitters. _How_ had the Masons not got their asses killed long before John came on the scene, again?

"Yeah, yeah, nice to meet ya," he drawled, extending a hand for his own exchange of grips. "I'd appreciate it if you wait to fill in the rest 'til later, though; my leg hurts like a sonuvabitch, and there's a whole lot of people in Charleston waiting anxiously to find out if this one's still alive and kicking." He tipped a thumb toward Tom.

The corners of Dingaan's eyes crinkled — but proving himself sensible as well as useful, he nodded and turned to address Lyle next, unprompted. "Of course. Though as there are only three motorcycles — I assume I am to ride with you?"

Lyle automatically looked to John, one eyebrow raised over an amused smirk, but didn't object. "Figured," he replied. "You got anything else to bring along?"

Dingaan shook his head. "No; the suits are good for only one use. We dropped them a few miles off to hopefully distract the first of the search parties."

"Sounds like we're good, then," Hal said briskly, then addressed his dad. "We figured we'd take the 74 south, break off toward the 95, then go the long way around the forest north of Charleston — out Georgetown way, then down along the coast. Hopefully, the Espheni won't be watching that route, especially if they're following the train back from Charlotte. We'll have to make at least one stop to scavenge for gas, since we weren't expecting to need the bikes — probably in Asheboro or Rockingham — but it shouldn't be too big of a problem."

Provided they could find some non-ethanol stuff, of course; preferably gas that had been stored with a stabilizer. A lot of the regular gasoline they'd scavenged lately had evaporated so many of its high-volatile compounds that it ran very raggedly, if at all. But it wasn't as if their particular apocalyptic wasteland came equipped with a Gastown still pumping and refining the good stuff to trade for water or bullets. If you asked John, that was the probably the real reason the Espheni had waited so long to switch over to their mysterious new energy source; they'd wanted to soak up all the consumables they could to fuel their war machine before deigning to set up their own — probably more expensive, and more vulnerable — resources.

And of course, they hadn't expected humanity to resist this long. Found fuels had probably always lasted until the fishheads were ready to get to the colony phase, before; something else to chew over, later.

"Sounds like a plan, then," Tom approved. "John, I'd ask if you want to drive, but ..."

John gave a put-upon sigh as the other man gestured toward his ankle. "Don't worry, I've already resigned myself to the inevitable. You good for a few more hours?"

"Yeah. As long as you don't mind helping me stay awake. Maybe we can try out that moving and talking thing again?" Tom replied.

"C'mon, really?" John chuckled at the disgruntled sound Hal made, shaking his head at the teenager. "If you were under the impression any part of that was a euphemism, I _really_ don't want to know what you and Mags have been up to on a motorbike, now do I? Maybe I should submit a request for the public works committee to sanitize the city fleet."

Tom lifted an eyebrow — and Maggie _blushed_ , of all things, looking away. Lyle smirked, and even Dingaan chuckled as they all moved to the bikes.

"That wasn't — I just —" Hal sputtered, then gave up and shook his head, walking over to Maggie's bike and leaving the one he'd previously ridden for Tom and John. "Whatever, man, shut up."

"Wait. Just a sec before we go ..." Maggie interrupted with a hand to his arm, then opened her arms to the professor. "I know I'm not the kid or the boyfriend, but I haven't had _my_ hug yet."

That made Tom smile at her, a little bashful but affectionate; John rolled his eyes and kept waiting while she folded Tom into a clasp of arms and muttered something in his ear. Tom frowned briefly, but hugged her back, nodded to whatever she was saying, then clasped a hand on her shoulder and walked over to join John.

" _Now_ are we ready?" John groused mildly.

"That is the question, isn't it," Tom said obliquely, eyes serious as he smiled back. Then he threw a leg over the bike and patted the seat behind him. "But, yeah. It's time to go."

* * *

John wrapped his arms around Tom's waist as they rode south of town, chin hooked over the other man's shoulder, and ignored his aching bones as he contemplated that 'moving and talking' request. It was a dark night, and they didn't dare use the headlamps lest they attract a nearby Espheni patrol; that meant they were traveling just slow enough to actually hold a conversation if they raised their voices a little over the sounds of the engine and the rushing wind. They wouldn't beat the train back that way, but better safe than dead or picked up by hornets for the second time in as many days.

"So how 'bout we start with whatever it was you kept saying you'd tell me after I got back," he finally began.

Tom's jaw shifted in a grimace, but he answered gamely. "You're not going to like it."

"Story of my life. Tell me anyway," John snorted.

Tom sighed, the discontented gesture felt more than heard as the slipstream whipped mingled strands of their hair into John's eyes. "Thought you'd say that. It's ... well, to make a long story short. One of the rebel Skitters asked to meet me after you left; it turned out he'd been at the Boston tower. And from what he had to say, I think I've figured out what Red Eye was up to."

John stiffened. The alien DNA thing again; oh, joy. What now? He'd just about successfully repressed all that shit, at least where Tom was concerned. "Oh, yeah?"

"Yeah," Tom replied grimly, shifting into a story-teller's cadence. "You see — once upon a time, there was a race called the Dorniya. They specialized in the biological sciences. After the Espheni conquered their planet, their new rulers used their techniques to make the Dorniya themselves into the first Skitters. Except, according to the Skitters, they missed a few; the ones who remember those days tell myths about the return of the Last Mothers. But the harnesses block whatever native communication ability they once had; so they've been looking for someone they could trust to talk to the Last Mothers _for_ them."

"You," John said, then swore, feelingly. Even beyond the confirmation that there was yet another alien player in this war with yet another set of expectations, he could easily see where this specific thread was going.

"Yeah. Like I said, a long story. It was always about me being _useful_ to them; Lexie's abilities, as distracting as they were to Karen, were mostly a convenient side-effect as far as the rebels were concerned." A current of anger deep enough to match John's simmered audibly under the strain of making himself heard.

"Just how long have they been looking for someone to do this to?" John wanted to know.

"Your guess is as good as mine," Tom shook his head, beard brushing against John's cheek, then added something that pissed him off even more. "The Dorniya themselves — if that's who they are — aren't very forthcoming."

"They've _contacted_ you?" John demanded, staring at Tom's profile. His skin tone looked unhealthily grey in the dark; his eyes were deep and unfathomable, fixed on the unspooling ribbon of the road ahead. Was this why Mason had looked so wrung out even before his involuntary flight to Greensboro? "When?"

The corner of Tom's mouth dragged down. "You know those dreams I've been having? About Rebecca? Not actually Rebecca, as it turns out; it's their method of contact."

...If they had the ability to poke into Tom's head, shouldn't they _know_ that picking on anyone he cared about was a good way to shoot themselves in the foot? Both the Volm and the Espheni seemed to have absorbed human history like they'd swallowed an encyclopedia, or vacuumed it up off the Internet; but they had a very weak grasp of individual human behavior. Apparently the Dorniya were no better in that regard.

"And they expect you to _intercede_ for them?" John objected. "Have they even _met_ you?"

"...I'm not so sure that's what _they_ have in mind, regardless of what Red Eye intended," Tom shook his head. "The only thing I _do_ know for sure is that they're not on the same side as the Espheni. Yesterday's dream was a little clearer — it seems the Dorniya have been trying to tell me where to find the new power plant."

That didn't necessarily mean they were on humanity's side; just that it was in their best interests to prolong the conflict. But Tom would know that as well as John did. They'd just have to deal with that potential ambiguity later, the same way they had the Volm Commander's condescension. But first, they had to survive to have that fight.

"So where _is_ the damn thing? The sooner we blow it off the face of the Earth, the better."

Tom chuckled darkly, shaking his head again. "You're not going to like part that, either."

"If I folded that easy, I wouldn't have lived this long. Just rip the Band-Aid off already." John rolled his eyes.

"Okay, then." Mason took a deep breath, then lobbed the answer at him like a live grenade. "The reason we've had such a hard time finding it ... is that it's not _on_ the Earth. It's on the moon."

"...It's _where_?!" John glanced reflexively up at the sky even though the moon had already set for the night, then back down at the back of Mason's head, aghast. "You have _got_ to be joking."

"I'm afraid not; Dingaan even confirmed that it made sense. Something about Nikola Tesla's theories."

Dingaan and John clearly had very different definitions of 'making sense'. But the name did sound familiar. "Tesla ... he was Edison's rival, right? Something about electrical currents?" John remembered the name more from a graphic novel his son had liked and those novelty lightning globes of the 80's than from any actual history classes, but the AC/ DC thing had stuck because of the Australian band by the same name.

"Not my historical specialty; but yeah, that sounds about right. I got in touch with Cochise and asked him to call his father — we'd run into serious problems trying to destroy it on our own."

"Great. Yet more favors we'll owe the Volm. _If_ they choose to show up," John replied.

"Plan B right now is to fix one of the crashed Beamers outside Charleston, so ..." Tom let that horrifying thought trail off, shooting a wry smile past his shoulder at John. "Six of one, half a dozen of the other."

"Moving on, then," John shook his head, unwilling to touch the idea of following Mason into _outer space_ in broken Espheni tech with a ten-foot pole. Because Tom _would_ insist on going; John knew that already. And he'd never be able to let him go alone. "Anything _else_ world-shattering you need to tell me?"

...He'd meant the remark flippantly, but the pause before Tom replied, and way his back tensed up against John's chest, told him he'd hit close to the mark after all.

"Great. What _now_?" he sighed.

Tom took a deep breath, then answered. "I also figured out that I've been wrong about the war, this whole time. The Espheni aren't here for resources, like I thought; they're here for _us_. Humanity. It's the only thing that makes sense. I've still got no idea _why_ , but it's increasingly obvious that they want all of us _gone_ , and they don't really care how many casualties they take to do it. Wearing them down isn't going to work, no matter how many camps we liberate or how many Beamers we shoot down."

Was that all? John snorted, remembering what he'd told Marshall outside Charleston — that as pragmatic as Tom was, he still _wanted_ to believe the best. He still _hoped_. For better or for worse, that wasn't a failing of John's. "Hate to tell you this, Mason, but most of us pretty much assumed that outcome from the beginning. Like I told you before — reestablishing democracy's _your_ goal. Mine's killing all of 'em I can, for as long as I can. If we actually make it out of this war in one piece, I'll be very pleasantly surprised."

Tom took a deep, shuddering breath, one hand briefly coming off the handlebars to squeeze one of John's wrists where his arms were wrapped around him. "They tried to make a deal with me yesterday to give up Charleston in exchange for protecting my family. But when I called them on the whole 'live in peace' concentration camp dichotomy, they didn't deny it. And then they implied that what they plan for the survivors in the camps is ..." He trailed off there, swallowing thickly. "Well. If you were wondering why we haven't seen those hornet things before? It turns out they used to be rebels, before they were tortured and reprogrammed."

"Well _shit_ ," John replied, shuddering in revulsion. The threat of eyebugs was bad enough; and this DNA crap with Tom rode right up to the line of do not pass go, do not collect $200. But getting everything that makes a person, a person, overwritten both in body and soul ... that wouldn't be surviving, even if your heart kept beating. "I guess I can see how kowtowing to the Volm might seem like a lesser evil, compared to that. Hell, _I'd_ even kiss Cochise's boots to keep that from happening."

"Now that _would_ be something to see," Tom said, dryly.

John winced at the defeated note in Tom's voice; it reminded him of the look on the professor's face the day Crazy Lee had died, when he'd refused to react to any of the accusations John hurled at him, or the complete blankness to him that misty night in Boston after they'd seen what they'd thought were Anne and Lexie's bodies. The man just did not respond well to that level of emotional baggage; it was like a vital part of him shut down, waiting for someone to give him permission to feel again. A legacy of always suppressing his anger, instead of giving it free rein like John, probably. But at least the anger let John know he was still _alive_.

He cleared his throat and leaned closer to drawl in Tom's ear. "...Not his dick, though. One part-alien schlong is more than enough for _this_ ex-con, believe you me."

The crude joke surprised a hoarse chuckle out of Tom, like a ray of light cracking through his emotional gloom. "You are _such_ an asshole. How do you always know when I need a kick in the ass?"

A smug smile curled at the corner of John's mouth. "Long experience; though I admit, using that power for good's a pretty recent development. Don't tell me you've already forgotten how our conversations _used_ to go."

Tom snorted again, the lines around his visible eye crinkling up in a subdued smile. "Perhaps I think only of the past as its remembrance gives me pleasure."

That sounded suspiciously like a quote John should recognize; it was also such a blatant lie that John felt no compunction in snorting in return. "You must have a lot of holes in your memories of the last few years, then."

"Oh, more than a few," Tom replied, lightly. "Which reminds me, who are you, again?" He threw a brief flash of white teeth in John's direction.

"Ha, ha, very funny," John replied, grinning back at him, then sobered. Now that he'd poked a hole in the black cloud over Mason's head ... he was reminded of another that hadn't been mentioned yet. "Speaking of genies we wish we could put back in bottles ... you're gonna need to have a talk with your daughter as soon as we get back to Charleston."

Tom's spine straightened automatically at the shift in topic, going into Concerned Father mode. "Hal said she freaked out when I was taken ... though he also said you staged an armed occupation of the kitchens, so I wasn't sure how to take the news. I'm guessing it was something serious, then?"

"I wasn't actually _armed_ — well, any more than I usually am," John shrugged. "The Lexie thing, though; yeah, it's pretty damn serious. She went full-on X-Men on us; called up a wall of clouds and fried a bunch of hornets with lightning. Just missed the ones that had you, then collapsed and cried her little eyes out. I think I cheered her back up a bit before I left, but she wasn't the only one to react poorly to what happened."

" _Lightning_?" Tom blurted, eyes widening, then swore under his breath. "I _thought_ I'd heard thunder before I passed out, but I thought I was imagining things. It must be the frequency issue; I'd almost forgotten about that, after everything else."

"What frequency issue?" John frowned.

"In the infirmary, after Anne did the procedure to clear the infection out of her blood, Lexie said she could hear energy. Like light sources; they all resonate on different frequencies. I guess Dr. Kadar explained it to her by talking about how the right note can shatter glass — which has some pretty unnerving implications."

"Unnerving's definitely the right word for it," John agreed. He hadn't done as much self-study in science as he had in other fields, but he thought he got the gist of what Tom was talking about — and it was some pretty scary shit. "The physical changes were one thing; creepy as the spikes are, folks have sort of gotten used to ex-harnessed kids bouncing around like your friendly neighborhood Spiderman. This energy manipulation stuff is a whole new ballgame, and nobody seemed to have any idea how to deal with it. So ... I told her to practice."

"You did _what_?" Tom's kneejerk reaction — _literally_ kneejerk, the bike actually veered briefly off course — was about what he'd expected, but he honestly didn't see how he could have done anything else.

"The kid was well on the way to being afraid of herself already; she's definitely your daughter there, Mason. She was wearing that 'world of woe' angst-face I just had to resort to dick jokes to jar _you_ out of, and I knew better than to go there with her. I've seen Star Wars, same as the next guy; what happens after fear turns to hatred's not a pretty prospect. Better she's in control of herself, I figured, than something — or somebody — else is."

"Does Anne know you told her to do that?" Tom said, jaw tight.

"I'm sure she does by _now_ ," John shrugged. "Lourdes was there, and Anne said she'd check in with her afterward when I asked if I could talk to Lexie. If she didn't think I had some kind of point, she could have yanked me from the mission, or had a little talk with Weaver before we left; and she didn't. Draw your own conclusion."

Tom sighed. "I _just_ got through promising her that I would always respect her rights as Lexie's mother; that I'd go to her first about anything that affects our daughter. If she thinks I put you up to that, or that I'm okay with your doing an end-run around her ..."

"So what if she does?" John growled, unconsciously leaning back to leave as much of a gap as possible between him and Tom. The ' _our_ daughter' comment had dragged up memories from that last trip back from Boston; he'd never quite got Lexie's childish words out of his mind, that first time she'd called him Uncle John. She'd run to him, asked him to pick her up ... and then said she couldn't wait to meet his _other_ daughter. Maybe that was the real reason he'd never really been able to see her as the enemy; because she'd claimed _him_ before she'd ever reached for her actual daddy.

"You know what Alexis said to me yesterday?" he continued, temper sparking under the words. "When I found her crying in Lourdes' lap? That she could _feel_ how scared people were of her. And that she'd thought I would be, too. Five'll get you ten she's just as worried that you and her mom and her brothers are gonna feel the same. What was I supposed to do, tell her the assholes are right, and she should turn the other cheek and let them lock her up so they could feel better about themselves? Fuck that. 'Normal' might have been _your_ refuge after you got away from your father; it sure as hell wasn't mine. If she doesn't own this _now_ , it's gonna own her, and then we'll _all_ be sorry."

"Oh, is _that_ what happened to you," Tom replied, in stung tones. "You let your circumstances 'own' you? You'll have to forgive me for thinking that might not make the best role model for my daughter."

For a long second, John almost couldn't believe Tom had actually said that; then the blood rushed to his face, and he smacked a hand against the back of Tom's shoulder. "That's it! Stop the bike. Stop the bike right now!"

"Look, John ..." Tom started to reply defensively, wincing as he glanced back at him.

"I am _not_ going to have this argument with the back of your head," John replied, in clipped, furious tones.

At least the man had that much common sense; he slowly pulled off into the verge, behind a cop car long gone to weed. Not that they had to worry about the other bikes coming up on them — they'd pulled ahead to let Tom and John have a bit of privacy — but to make them less visible to any overflying Beamers. They couldn't entirely forget the danger of their surroundings, no matter how involved they were in their personal business.

Tom set the kickstand on the bike, then got up and put a little space between them. Then he squared his stance, lifting his gaze to meet John's. "You know I didn't mean it that way. I'm sorry; I'm frustrated, and I shouldn't be taking it out on you," he said, through clenched teeth.

"Damn right, you shouldn't have," John replied, staring back at him. "I might've expected a crack like that out of you before Keystone, but I thought we understood each other a little better these days. And there's some things you just don't _say_ and not expect to sleep on the couch for at least a week, no matter how good you are in the sack. What the hell's going on with you, Mason? I could have sworn you were glad to see me."

Tom's expression dropped further at that; he looked deeply unhappy, as though it was tearing him up to be upset at John. But he _was_ upset with him; that was pretty obvious. And yet there'd been no hint of it in their greeting. That could be part of why he'd backslid so quick on the 'burden of the world' issues, before John had even brought up Lexie — but John had no idea what the root problem was. If this was some nonsense about him almost getting kidnapped by the flying Skitters, Tom had _zero_ room to throw stones on that score.

Tom rubbed a hand over his beard, then sighed. "I was. Am. I'm sorry; I said I wasn't going to do this."

"Do _what_?" John scowled, crossing his arms over his chest. This was starting to sound like a breakup speech, and if that was the case, Tom _deserved_ a punch in the face from all the mixed signals.

Tom swallowed. "Test you again. You said that you were in this, whatever this is, until you're ready to give up on me," he said, gesturing between them.

"So what the hell made you doubt that all of a sudden?" John replied, sourly. Damn it; he'd noticed Mason's habit of verifying before trusting, but he thought they'd passed that stage already. "Was it something I said about Alexis? Because she claimed me first, in case you've forgotten. Even if you kicked me to the curb for no reason, she'd be the last Mason I took it out on."

"It's just that Maggie said ..." Tom began, then grimaced as though he'd suddenly realized something and shook his head. "She said I should take the opportunity to talk to you, because you seemed to be under the impression that this was a temporary thing. I was thinking that if it was just me ... hell, I'd take as much as you could give me, but it struck me wrong that you'd put so much effort into Alexis — and Matt, too — if you were just going to be one more person to disappear on them."

" _Maggie_ said? Is _that_ what she whispered in your ear." John stared at him, aghast at both the interference and the level of fuckup just those few words had caused ... then laughed, darkly amused, as he realized _why_ she'd said them. Damn; he'd underestimated that woman more than once, but trying to warn her off on the way to Mechanicsville by threatening to spill _her_ secrets if she bad-mouthed him to Tom had probably been right up there with asking her to hang back with Billy and Cueball that momentous day in Acton.

"This has to be about what happened after we picked up Sara — that scavenger who stole Tector's horse on our way up to Charlotte. She was hitting on me, and our Mags there thought I wasn't shutting her down quick enough to suit _her_. So she did it _for_ me, and then we had us a little dustup about expectations in post-apocalyptic domesticity. I told her that so-called 'true love' is a luxury; very few people in this world are gonna be lucky enough to fall ass over teakettle in the first place, never mind build some mythical happily ever after out of hormones and wishful thinking. Most people just settle for 'good enough' and hang on until it isn't. So she got it into her head that _I_ think that _you're_ settling."

"She thought _I'd_ leave _you_?" Tom replied, tone affronted enough to almost be called a yelp.

John chuckled again mirthlessly, then began closing the distance between them, one slow, deliberate step at a time. "No. She probably thought that if she poked the hornet's nest, either you'd correct me — or we'd break up, and that either one-upmanship would suit her just fine."

About an arm's-length of leaf-strewn asphalt separated them by the time John stopped walking. Tom shook his head again. "Somehow I doubt you have any more unbiased a picture of her motives than she does of yours. But was she right about this? _Do_ you think I'm settling?" he demanded.

"I don't think that _you_ think that you are," John shrugged. He hadn't ever intended to bring the subject up; he hadn't seen how discussing it could possibly lead to a positive outcome, and so far the conversation was proving him right. "So what difference does it make?"

Tom's lips thinned as he locked gazes with John, his expression cast in shades of dim blues and dark greys in the deep night, like carved granite. "It makes a _big_ difference — at least, to me. Settling is what my mother did; what I swore I'd never do, when I finally got out of that toxic environment. Maybe it _was_ a miracle that I found Rebecca when I did; that I managed to break out of that cycle. But do you honestly think I'm desperate enough to reach out again without knowing my own mind? Just because I failed with Anne doesn't mean I went into either relationship expecting to put anything less than my full effort into it. I _know_ you heard me when I told Anne you're what keeps me going these days — did you think I was exaggerating for her benefit?"

John scrubbed a hand over his face, and felt suddenly very tired. "No; more like I thought you were fooling _yourself_. It's not like I haven't noticed that every time we split up, for whatever reason, and I come back — you open up just a little bit more. Call it whatever you want; I was just expecting to take whatever you were willing to give _me_ before you finally came to your senses and realized I'd been using _you_."

Tom's face finally softened. "What a pair we make. Me afraid that I'll hold on too hard, you determined not to hold on hard enough. I'm using you every bit as much as you're using me, you know."

"Yeah? And how's that, then?" John asked sharply, wondering what qualified as 'using' in the Mason dictionary.

"What do any two human beings in love use each other for? To not feel so lonely. To find a little joy in this world. To make ourselves better people," Tom shrugged, closing that last distance with an almost hesitant air, reaching for one of John's hands. John let him take it, watching him warily as Tom gave him a pained smile.

"In love," John scoffed automatically at the word, feeling the scrape of Tom's gloves against his palm as he tightened his grip. Both word and sensation sent a shiver up his spine entirely unrelated to their cold, dark surroundings. "That seems like an awfully loaded phrase for, what, thirty-eight days or so of wartime companionship?"

About enough for one round of Survivor, ironically enough, back when reality TV was still a thing.

"Maybe — _if_ those thirty-eight days were all there was to it," Tom shook his head, rubbing a thumb over the back of John's knuckles. "But you know as well as I do that this is more than just 'hormones and wishful thinking'. The tenor of the emotions may have changed more recently; but the intensity's always been there, and you know what they say about the flip side of hate. So here's another quote for you; unattributed, this time: 'Love is two imperfect people refusing to give up on each other'."

They _did_ have the 'imperfect' and 'refusing to give up' parts down cold, didn't they? John got what Tom was trying to say. He'd recognized that from the beginning of this trainwreck, when he'd finally stopped bristling and realized he was already halfway gone on the guy; he'd been drawn to him in one way or another from the get-go. It was just that he still had a hard time believing Tom _was_ actually using that four-letter word ... or that John wanted him to _mean_ it so badly.

Like it or not, John had found himself at a crossroads; one of those poetic byways diverging in a thorny wood. _Whither thou goest_ , he'd muttered to himself back in Boston, at another; and _whither thou lodgest_ , unspoken but very much present, when he'd brought that duffel bag full of clothes to Tom's room. He was already living the _thy people shall be my people_ part. So why was the rest of it sticking so badly? _Whither thou diest_ ...

...In other words, _'til death do us part_. Right.

"You asked me once to be patient with you," he said quietly, impulsively lifting the hand clasped around his to press his lips to the callused skin where Tom's fingers emerged from the distressed fabric of his worn half-glove. "We've spoken a lot of the same language from the start, despite the different lives we've lived; but that's caused as many problems as it's helped, I think. You're a words guy; there's certain things you just want to hear, but words never did me a damn bit of good until I met you. There's some things I just don't know how to say, and some things I won't trust anyone else to say to _me_ until I see them proven, first."

"Patience," Tom said, eyes roaming hungrily over John's face. "I can do patience, if I know there's a reason."

John smiled crookedly at him. "How about a few words I _can_ say, then? 'Intreat me not to leave thee', Mason. Will that be enough for now?"

He saw the second Tom remembered the rest of that particular verse from the Biblical book of Ruth; the one that had been bouncing around in John's mind for quite some time now. Tom heaved a shaky sigh, then lifted his free hand to brush a few strands of hair back out of John's face. "John Pope Mason," he replied obliquely, referencing the whole clan conversation they'd had the week before.

"Still not my name," John said, the corner of his mouth tugging upward.

"I'll take the hint for now; but I reserve the right to ask again later," Tom said, confirming the hint with a warm crinkle around his eyes. "Think you'll be all right with that?"

"Bullets before food before fuel before entertainment," John smirked in reply, reminding him pointedly of his oft-stated chain of priorities.

"Might have to demote bullets on the official scale, just for that," Tom snorted. "Or rank you _as_ a bullet, maybe?"

"Deadliest weapon in the President's arsenal?" John affected a considering look. "Think maybe I could live with that."

"We're good, then?" Tom asked, smile fading away as he searched John's face.

"Mason ..." John shook his head, then relented. "I don't know _what_ we are, but good's probably somewhere in there, yeah."

The expression Tom made at that practically begged to be cut off with a kiss; it was the only reliable way John had found to keep Tom from saying something even _more_ disruptive to his peace of mind. He shifted his weight to lean in — then gasped and doubled over instead as stiff, injured muscles seized at the motion, and grabbed for Tom's arms to keep from hitting his knees.

"John?" Tom asked, clutching him back, voice sharpening in alarm.

"I'm fine, I'm fine — don't suppose you have any ibuprofen on you, though? Don't think the doc planned on me zipping around on a motorcycle for hours," he joked, hissing as he took his weight back off the leg.

"No; all I've got on me is a few credit notes and the comm. Damn, I should have asked Hal to bring another one; I could've called him back."

"No, no; just — let's get back on the road. I'll be _fine_. Sooner we're back in Charleston, the better, though."

"Right. Here; lean on me." Tom shifted one of John's arms over his shoulders, in not-quite-ironic echo of that day on a river bank nearly six weeks before, and helped him back to the bike.

The quality of the tension between them was entirely different now, though. And much as he hated to admit it — that was a conversation they probably _had_ needed to have.

Not that he'd tell Maggie, when they caught up to them at whatever gas station they'd picked to wait at.

He wrapped his arms around his partner, then settled in to endure the ride.

-(8/10)-


	9. The Roots of War

_"Such were the roots of disturbances, of tumult and war."_  
— Popul Vuh, Part Five

* * *

That last stretch of highway into Charleston, with the sun breaking over the horizon and limning the world in shades of bronze and burnished gold, felt curiously like the dawn of a whole new world to Tom. Nothing had really changed the night before — and yet it felt as though everything had, somehow. The promises he and John had made to one another weren't anything he'd have looked for or expected before that eventful flight north to West Virginia; and he was a little concerned how Dan and his older two kids would react to the idea that the relationship was more than just a fit of rebound insanity. But the argument he'd had with John, and its cathartic resolution, had settled something in him that he was just now realizing had been restless for a very long time.

For all his conversation with Marina about the human capacity for emotion confounding the Espheni, he'd started to wonder over the last year or so if love was more an impediment in the war than it was an edge. It had felt as though with every loss the Second Mass had suffered he'd lost pieces of himself as well. But far from clouding his thinking, solidifying his relationship with John seemed to have given him back some of those pieces instead.

Maybe his kids should have been enough; maybe his relationship with Anne should have been enough; maybe his friendship with Dan, even; but what was left of him after Rebecca's death had been fracturing under the strain at least since he'd been elected. Maybe even since his return from Karen's grasp the first time, carrying an eyebug back to the Second Massachusetts — or since he'd run into Harris, back in Acton, and realized that his so-called friend had left his wife to die. Some part of him had been slowly, quietly bleeding all that time, sapping his strength and gradually turning determination to desperation.

He slowed, waving to the sentry at the far end of the bridge, then headed across, tires bumping over the handbuilt wooden deck. Had it really been so long since he'd felt hope for himself, beneath the front he put up for everyone else? Because despite everything — that seemed to be what he'd found with John, the ground firming under his emotional feet at long last.

The famous Archimedes quote flitted through his mind at the thought: _Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world._ Well; if he'd found his place to stand, all he needed now was the lever. The Dorniya might help with that — if they were what they pretended to be. Time would tell.

"Home sweet home," John murmured as they crossed the long span into the city, interrupting Tom's thoughts with a hand sliding down from his waist to bracket his thigh, thumb brushing over the inner seam of his jeans. "'Bout time. It's been a long couple of weeks, if you know what I mean."

Exhaustion and the chill of the nighttime air had muted most of the nerves that should have tingled under the touch; a good thing, since he might have embarrassed himself otherwise. "Food, shower, and sleep first, maybe even in that order," Tom replied dryly, casting a raised eyebrow back over his shoulder in John's direction. "And medical attention for you; you're not getting out of facing the music that easily."

"You _do_ know that endorphins are the body's natural painkillers, right?" John drawled.

"You _do_ realize that I haven't slept or eaten a full meal in ... ugh, don't even ask me to count the hours," Tom countered, stifling a yawn. "And that Anne's likely to come track you down herself if you don't show up?"

John sighed, torso shifting against Tom's back as he moved his hand back to a slightly less suggestive position. "And of course you'll have meetings to get to this evening. _Mister_ President."

"It's like you actually knew who I was before you got involved with me," Tom said lightly, feigning astonishment.

"Yeah, a pain in my ass," John replied, in fond, warm tones.

* * *

About that time, they passed the next line of the defenses, rolling slowly in over gritty asphalt with Hal and Maggie just behind them, Lyle and Dingaan bringing up the rear. They'd changed the order of procession at the last gas stop, after a furious whispered discussion between Maggie and John that Tom had deliberately kept out of; both of them had finished the argument looking a combination of aggravated and smug, though the most interesting thing about it as far as Tom was concerned wasn't the fight itself, but the tolerant raised eyebrow Hal had given the spectacle. Something he'd have to ask about later. In the here and now, though, every soldier who laid eyes on them exclaimed and either pointed or turned to their friends, calling Tom's name or his title.

"Was it like this for you? After Fitchburg, and with the folks at the Nest?" Tom murmured, waving to the crowd in general acknowledgement. There weren't too many of them at that early hour, at least; and he didn't see anyone he knew very closely, either. With any luck, that meant the kids — and the rest of the command team who'd stayed behind — were still asleep; he was tired enough that he'd been afraid _he'd_ fall asleep on the bike the last few miles, never mind trying to hold an important conversation.

"Sort of? I mean, with a little more scandal to it — I was always more the bad boy than the knight in shining armor," John shrugged. "More notoriety, less responsibility. Which is pretty much how I wanted it."

"I'd give it all up for peace — I would, if we _were_ at peace," Tom said wistfully, then shook his head. He already _had_ the responsibility, though; ditching it without anyone prepared to pick it up would do no one any good, and be a purely selfish move on his part. And for all John said he didn't want responsibility of his own, he seemed to have far fewer qualms helping Tom bear up under his. "But for the time being, like you said ... ah, good, Dan's still here."

The railyard was bustling with activity as they rolled in, noisy with fresh First Continental soldiers squaring all the weapons and supplies away, the last of the refugees disembarking to stand in line to talk to one of Jeanne's public works volunteers, and Colonel Weaver yelling orders at a mixed group of engineers and Berserkers decoupling the modified flat car carrying the grid gun from the rest of the train. Dan looked up as they rolled in, and his whole body seemed to relax as he recognized them.

"Tom!" Dan called, striding away from the train as they pulled the bikes to a halt. He had to be at least as exhausted as they were, but there was no hint of it in his energetic pace. Tom threw the kickstand, then dismounted, pausing only to make sure John was steady on his feet before stepping into a backslapping hug.

"It's good to see ya," Dan said tightly as they pulled back from the hug, studying Tom closely. "You all right?"

"Except for getting kidnapped in the first place, much better than I had any right to expect, actually," Tom smiled tiredly at him, returning the evaluation. It looked like one shoulder had been bandaged since Tom had last seen him, but it wasn't impeding Dan's range of motion any; otherwise, he seemed tired but in decent spirits. "I'll have a lot to report; later, though, after we all get some rest and refreshment. When are you holding the debrief for the mission?"

"Afternoon; fifteen hundred or so. You sure you want to be there? Everyone would understand if you needed a day or two more." Dan glanced to John, then the others, as if testing Tom's true mood by their reactions; annoying, though understandable, considering how wrecked he'd been the last time the Espheni had taken him.

"I'm sure," Tom nodded, firmly. "They tried to reason with me this time, rather than going straight for the torture; they gave me a 48-hour ultimatum. But I'm fine; I escaped before they came back to enforce it."

"Well, if you're sure," Dan gave him a skeptical look, then clapped him on the arm again and grinned. "A few months the first time, a few weeks the second, a few days the third ... if nothing else gave me hope we'll eventually take these bastards down, that would. Welcome home, Tom."

"Good to be home, Dan," Tom replied, nodding to him. Then he glanced back toward the train. "Anything I need to know before I crash for a few hours?"

"Final count's still coming in, but it looks like we'll have at least a few hundred new provisional residents; most of 'em so far are opting to stay and earn their citizenship," Dan replied. "As for ours, we did have a few casualties. No fatalities among the Second Mass this time, though, and not bad at all considering the damage we did in return. I'll have a full accounting at the debriefing, and family notification letters; wasn't looking forward to signing those myself. Oh, and Ben's still out of the city — he said he'd be traveling back with the rebel Skitters — but he was fine last I saw him, and he sent Denny with us. She'll answer any questions we have on that front, if the rest aren't back before we meet."

"Good to know," Tom said, nodding. "And the 14th Virginia — John said you brought most of them with you? How'd they perform?"

"They're eager to find Hathaway, but willing enough to follow the chain of command in the meantime," Dan shrugged. "We'll have to discuss the timeline for that at the meeting, too; you said he wasn't in Greensboro?"

"No," Tom shook his head, "nor any of his soldiers that I could tell. Most of the people had been there since the start, or were brought in as individual stragglers like Dingaan and I. Richmond would be my guess for where they took him; Dingaan didn't remember seeing him there, but he also escaped around the time the Keystone captives should have arrived, so they might not have overlapped. They'll probably be expecting us to attack there next anyway, if Hathaway was approached like I was. But — I'm sure we'll cover that in more detail at the meeting."

"Right, right." Dan agreed, absent-mindedly, as he glanced back toward the continuing work at the train. "Hey! Eyes on the job! Sooner you get it done, sooner we all get to bed, so get a move-on, soldiers!" he yelled, glaring at the distracted troops.

"Which, by the way," Tom said, turning back to wave Dingaan forward to the group. "Dan, this is Dingaan Botha; Dingaan, Colonel Dan Weaver. I'll be inviting Dingaan to the meeting, both because he has first-hand intel on the Espheni prison camps, and because he's an electrical lineman; he has some news you'll definitely want to hear."

"Nice to meet you, Dingaan," Dan replied with a distracted nod, shaking the other man's hand.

"Likewise, Colonel," Dingaan replied.

"But if the pair of you don't mind, I'd like to find a cot sometime before noon myself," Dan continued.

"Go on, go on; we'll see you again later," Tom replied, then turned and began ushering the rest toward the nearest entry to the underground mall. "C'mon, guys; just a few more minutes."

No one objected; they all fell in, trailing him like a flock of exhausted goslings, leaving the bikes behind in the railyard. Hal and Maggie would probably go straight to their room, not too far from his; they were leaning on each other as they walked, chuckling almost drunkenly from fatigue. John had picked up a stick somewhere as a substitute cane, and was trailing at Tom's heels; he apparently had no desire to sleep alone, even with endorphins off the table, which was good because Tom didn't, either. As for Lyle, Tom wouldn't be surprised if he meant to supplement the guard that morning; the Berserkers still did that occasionally, for he or John or both. And Dingaan would no doubt find a place to crash in the guest VIP quarters, at least until they had time to talk to Dr. Kadar.

It took longer than Tom would have liked to reach their destination, though; as more people flooded out to greet the day, it seemed like every other person they passed wanted to shake hands with him and express their faith in him and relief that he was back in one piece, and he couldn't just brush them off. He pasted on the most earnest smile he could and thanked each one, moving on as quickly as they would allow, and by the time he'd reached the corridor leading to his room all of the others but John had gone on ahead, drifting off to other destinations. Even the usual sentry outside the President's quarters was nowhere to be seen, though that would probably change the moment word of his return filtered down through the correct channels.

A wave of fatigue swept over him as he stopped outside the glass doors, thinking of all the tasks he really should complete before stepping inside and pulling back the covers. It was extremely tempting to just forget all that, to just walk in and lie down in all his dirty, dusty, hungry and dehydrated state. He sighed, glancing over at John, and surprised another soft, fond look on the other man's face. John reached out to feather his fingers through Tom's hair, and it was all Tom could do not to turn his face into that hand and close his eyes with a groan.

"Look at you," John tsk'ed. "I'm the one who just fought a battle and traveled several hundred miles on a lame leg to bring you home, but you look about as bushed as I feel. Why don't you go on and take your shower, clean up and come right back? I sent Lyle to the kitchens for something light; soup, eggs, whatever they got at this hour. It should be here by the time you're done. I'll go by the infirmary, get cleaned up myself, then join you."

"Sounds like heaven," Tom admitted roughly.

"If I see Matt and Lexie while I'm out, I'll let 'em know you're here, and that you'll see 'em at lunch," John promised, drawing an X over his chest and thereby proving he'd spent entirely too much time around teenagers of late. Then he stifled a yawn. "Or ask Tanya to do it; if I don't see them, I'm pretty sure I'll run into her."

"Don't take too long," Tom replied. "Quicker you're back, quicker we can sleep."

"Quicker _I_ can sleep. If I'm not back by the time you're done eating, don't stay up on my account," John shook his head. "If I ran away at _this_ stage of the game, I think even Lyle would hunt me down and carry me back to you, caveman style."

"That wasn't what I ..." Tom's jaw cracked wide in another yawn; then he chuckled, amused by the image despite the misunderstanding. "You know what, never mind." He tangled a hand up in the front of John's shirts and tugged him gently in for a kiss, just a bare brush of mouth against mouth.

It was an oddly tender kiss; perhaps the first one they'd shared that hadn't been instigated by either passion or adrenaline, just simple _attachment_. A quiet admission of caring. The couple of inches of height he had on John normally didn't matter much, but Tom felt them now as John relaxed into him, tension bleeding out of his posture. As the former academic of the pair, regardless of their actual positions in the group's shifting hierarchy, Tom had far more often been cast as the vulnerable one between them in past encounters, both negative and positive — and the Espheni's fascination with him hadn't helped with that. It was nice to be the one leaned against for a change, rather than the one doing the leaning. His lips curved against John's at the irony of the thought.

"We're going about this all out of order," he teased as they pulled apart again. "Isn't breakfast in bed supposed to come _after_ the knight in dusty leathers ravishes the self-rescuing damsel?"

"Shit, I only _wish_ I was up to some ravishing," John replied, surprised into a chuckle. Then his gaze turned thoughtful. "You're pretty good at kicking me in the ass when I need it too, you know."

The reference to the conversation the night before brought back another pithy comment, from a much earlier stage of their relationship, and Tom grinned at the reminder. "Quid pro quo, remember?"

John chuckled again, then kissed him one more time, briefly but with more intent; a promise, this time, rather than an admission. "Yeah, you just hold onto that thought."

* * *

Tom was sure there had been times when he'd done more, under more stressful conditions, on less sleep than he'd had in the last few days, both before and after arriving in Charleston. But at the moment, he was having a hard time bringing any of them to mind. The trip to the admin-level shower room and back — an area once intended as a mall employee locker room, fortunately already plumbed before the invasion — had sapped most of the energy he had left; by the time he'd donned clean clothes and accepted a plate of toast and glass of juice from Lyle, it was all he could do just to finish the simple meal.

Though the taste was definitely worth the effort. Apparently, John's stint in the kitchens had been productive in more ways than just as a distraction. Tom wondered how many people who'd eaten in the cafeteria that day had any idea where the fresh, delicious bread had come from; John's cooking skills had been the most widely-praised of the talents that had earned him a place in the Second Mass, but it had been well over a year since he'd formed the Berserkers and helped crack the siege of Fitchburg, and he'd never taken up the chef's hat again since. It was a shame, since he was _really_ good at it, much better than Tom's limited Sunday morning breakfast-making skills. Tom thought he might have to try coaxing the man to cook just for the immediate family more often.

He smiled up at the ceiling at that thought — _family_ — and set the plate down on his bedside endtable. He didn't really want to miss John's return, but it would take a pair of cranes to keep his eyelids up at the moment; he laid down atop the covers, dragging one of the pillows over for a headrest, and relaxed, letting his thoughts drift.

He didn't notice when he crossed the line from drowsing awareness to full sleep, though he knew it must have happened by the change in the quality of light around him. The dim, artificial illumination from the standing lamp in the corner suddenly became the brightness of spring sunshine, angling through the wide white window over the dining table, bringing a glow to the yellow walls of the kitchen in the house in Boston. Tom was dressed for a long day of teaching, standing by the coffee maker, and he had a half-full mug in one hand; Rebecca was there too, standing at the sink with a drying towel clasped in her hands and brows drawn together in disappointment.

Tom couldn't help it; his breath caught at the sight of her, and he wondered again what perverse impulse had first inspired the Dorniya to use her form for these meetings. Was it actually necessary for them to use emotionally resonant imagery to facilitate contact, or was it just that it was convenient, and they were indifferent to the turmoil it put him through? Either way, he was already tired of it.

"All right, hit me with it," he goaded her, then deliberately took a long draught of the coffee. Was he literally drinking his memories here, or was the Dorniya's mental landscape simply filling in the blank from his expectations? Not that a difference that made no difference was really worth differentiating ... and it had been a long, long time since he'd had a really good cup of joe. Might as well get some use out of the experience.

"You know how disappointed he gets when you don't show up," his long-dead wife said, shaking her head at him. "Are you _sure_ you can't clear your schedule?"

For a long moment, Tom had trouble making sense of that comment; who was 'he' supposed to be in this context? But then he recognized his own reaction to the words, nonsensical or not, and enlightenment teased at the edges of his thoughts. Emotionally resonant words to go with emotionally resonant imagery, perhaps?

Tom frowned, lowering the mug as he remembered what Lexie had said about her perception of light, and the further evidence of her abilities John had reported. Maybe that _was_ the common thread that tied things together. He couldn't recall, just from the words, whether the snip of conversation Rebecca's double was apparently repeating might refer to one of Matt's concerts, one of Ben's academic competitions, or one of Hal's lacrosse games, but the details didn't matter to the familiar, resigned guilt that the comment provoked. If the Dorniya were used to sensing resonances, both physical and otherwise, and manipulating them for effect, then ...

If he knew reaction what they were after, then it was a short trip to 'why'; translating from a heavily metaphoric use of language to a more literal one. Tom raised an eyebrow at the Dorniya avatar and made an educated guess.

"You wanted _me_ to be the one to act on the information about the moon, didn't you. You wanted me to go up there and destroy the power station myself — not as some reluctant plan B, but as plan A. Why, when the Volm are so much better positioned to take care of it?"

A look of consternation spread across the false Rebecca's face — and then her image flickered, replaced by a sleek, eight-limbed, visually sexless, and utterly alien figure. He could see the similarity of its basic structure to the Skitters, but at the same time, the being seemed considerably more graceful; its skin was smoother and paler, and its eyes much larger and more open in appearance. It probably said a great deal about ingrained cultural prejudices that he found this form less inherently repugnant; if he hadn't been thinking clearly, if he hadn't known about the DNA modification, he might have taken it for granted that it was naturally more benevolent than the Espheni.

A heartbeat later Rebecca's form snapped back into place, giving him a piercing, intent stare that seemed much clearer, somehow, than the rest of the memory-based world they were inhabiting.

"You catch on quickly, once you know what to look for," she said, a curve at the corner of her mouth so very like Rebecca's wry smile. "Much more quickly than we were expecting. But it takes more energy to communicate directly than it does to nudge old memories; energy the Espheni can sense and interfere with."

Tom vaguely remembered one of the spiked kids mentioning that a sufficiently powerful Espheni could detect and control a Skitter from up to five miles away; less than that for children still new to the harness, and still less for a Skitter trying to control one of those children themselves, but it all operated over the same 'shadow plane'. It made sense that the Dorniya's own long-range abilities would be detectable, given the murky tangle of the two races' history. If that was true, though, then why was it breaking cover to acknowledge him?

"But it just so happens that the nearest Overlords are all busy this morning," he mused aloud, tilting his head as he answered the question for himself. "Because of what we did in Charlotte."

"Because of you," Rebecca corrected him, smile turning bittersweet. "When acquiring other forms of life, we determine their value to the Dorniya and utilize them accordingly; our child did as he was tasked, and chose better than we could have imagined. But in doing so, he also tied our fate to yours."

He swallowed hard, fighting nausea at the implications — both the cold calculation that had put him in the role, and the added responsibility he hadn't asked for and still didn't quite understand. "But what does that _mean_?" he demanded.

Her gaze slipped past him, to fix on the kitchen doorway somewhere behind him, a frown gathering between her brows — and then the world seemed to shake, and suddenly he was back in Charleston again, the transition as abrupt as the cut of a knife.

"Hush," a voice was saying somewhere nearby — someone decidedly not Rebecca. Vaguely, he could feel a presence at his back, and a tugging sensation pulling at the fabric beneath him, but more than that was beyond him; he felt as though every inch of him, including his brain, had been wrapped in cotton wool.

"John ...?" he murmured, not bothering to open his eyes.

"Just pulling back the covers; everything's fine. Go back to sleep," the warm, raspy voice at his back replied.

The tugging sensation stopped; the bed dipped, and a warm, heavy arm slung itself over his midsection, just below the band of bruising. Something in Tom relaxed instinctively at the contact; he shifted carefully for comfort's sake, then let go, sinking back into the dreamscape.

Rebecca was waiting again when he arrived, though the spark of intensity had faded from her expression. Now that he knew to look for it, he could see the difference; maybe she'd figured the risk of keeping it up was too high, or somehow detected an Espheni presence nearby. But then why pull him back at all? How the hell did they intend to communicate anything meaningful to him if they had to avoid directly answering any of his questions?

Metaphor, symbolism; _resonance_. What was he supposed to do, try to trigger specific memories to get across the concepts he wanted? And was it only the Dorniya's actions that were at risk of attracting Espheni attention, or did it include the questions he was asking as well? He shook his head in frustration.

"Honey?" Rebecca's brows knit in concern. "What's wrong?"

"Utilize is an interesting word to choose," he replied, thinking his way through it aloud. "It implies action; that you want me to do something on your behalf. You obviously have a ship somewhere nearby, but rather than performing whatever action needs to be taken yourselves, you're working through a more primitive avatar. One that's taken you a long time to find. Ergo, it's both vitally important, and you _can't_ do it yourself. Now, Cochise told me that the only way any Dorniya might have escaped the destruction of their world unaltered was if they hadn't been there when the invasion fleet arrived. It isn't that you weren't there, though, is it? It's that you _were_ changed; that you deliberately did unto yourselves before they could do unto you. The thing is, putting you out of reach of _them_ also put them out of reach of _you_."

Rebecca set down the drying towel and approached, slowly lifting one hand to touch his face. "You are the love of my life, Tom Mason," she said, and he caught his breath again sharply as he recognized the conversation she was invoking. It wasn't one he would forget easily; it had happened after the invasion, when they had realized, among other things, that if her cancer ever came out of remission a second time that they wouldn't have any way of successfully treating it again. "The father of my beautiful boys; my faithful and adoring husband. I love everything about you, about our life together. I cherish every memory, every heated word, every murmur of affection between us."

"You aren't her," he whispered hoarsely, tears pricking at his eyes. "You aren't her. Why remind me of this?"

"...But you're also stubborn, quicker to trust your own judgment than rely on others, and have a tendency to think you need to know everything," she continued, shaking her head at him. A snippet from a completely different conversation, much earlier in their relationship, though one with just as much emotion behind it.

Tom tightened his jaw. "You're saying I should shut up and focus on the task to be done," he said, irritated at the manipulation. "That I don't need to know the details of _saving my own world_. I'm sorry, but that's not acceptable. I'm not going to just fly up there and put myself in your hands, not knowing what you plan to do with me; and I'm not going to just blindly follow along with your instructions, either. _Do_ you even have a specific endgame in mind? One that prioritizes not only the survival of the human race, but its freedom as well?"

Rebecca lowered her hand, brow still wrinkled in perturbation, and the dreamscape flickered around him; then he found himself seated at the dining table, mug of coffee at his lips again. His clothes were unchanged, but Rebecca was dressed much more casually, beaming at him over the rim of a cup of her favorite jasmine green tea. "You should have seen it, Tom," she said, brightly. "Hal made the winning goal tonight, and completely destroyed the other team's chances of advancing to the finals. They might actually make it themselves this year."

"Winning goal," Tom repeated, frowning intently as he dissected the reference. "You do have something in mind, then. Some kind of silver bullet, Hail Mary shot."

The dreamscape flickered again, other images and memories flashing before his mind's eye. A clip of Ben, standing out in a walled outdoor space, saying 'Espheni are tied to all the Skitters through this shadow plane.' A snapshot of the Skitter he'd been speaking for running away while Ben gasped in pain and fear: 'She comes, she comes.' A flash of his wife's stoic face after they'd found out her cancer was back when Matt was a toddler: 'I want to eradicate this so that it leaves me and never comes back'. And finally, the noticeboard at the school in Acton, centered on an article showing a picture of Espheni ships under the headline: "UNEXPLAINED BY SCIENCE."

It all added up to something, that was clear, but the sense of it all was still eluding him when he woke to a demanding knock on the door.

"Ugh. Stop the world, I want to get off," John muttered against his back, tightening the arm slung over him.

The probably-inadvertent double entendre — though one could never really be sure with John — surprised a chuckle out of Tom as he slowly stretched. Then he shifted toward the edge of the bed, slipping out of his partner's grip to rub the crustiness out of his eyes. "Tonight," he promised, then raised his voice toward the door. "Enter!"

The door cracked open a moment later and Lourdes slipped through, clutching a shoulderbag with an apologetic expression. "Sorry if I woke you, but since Pope showed up in the infirmary last night and you didn't, Anne thought you might want to get the inevitable post-kidnapping checkup done in private."

Tom folded the implications of the dream slash vision away to be dissected later and focused on the matter at hand. He managed a tired smile for her, rubbing absently at his sore ribs. "No, that's all right. I don't think there's anything _to_ check except a little leftover soreness from that hornet — but better safe than sorry."

Lourdes smiled at him in relief and moved to set the bag down on the end of the bed, removing a few familiar implements — and one not so familiar, a Volm device of some kind about the size of a hardback book. He vaguely recognized it from the crate of goods Cochise had gifted to them. "I can even scan for eyebugs now without an X-Ray machine, thanks to this; Anne and Dr. Kadar figured out how to calibrate it using the residue of the parasites the rebel Skitters took out of me and Hal."

Tom had already been sure he didn't have one, but it would be good to have proof already available before someone inevitably brought the subject up. "That would be great, Lourdes. I put myself into your capable hands."

She glanced briefly in John's direction at the comment and blushed. He'd slept clothed as well, or else Tom would have responded to a visitor's knock with a request to wait, but the expression on his face as he sat up and leered at the spectacle of Tom removing his shirt made _Tom_ want to blush, so he just grinned at the reaction.

"Speaking of capabilities," John said, clearing his throat as he carefully swung his feet over the edge of the bed and tested his sore ankle, "how's little sis?"

Lourdes' embarrassed smile grew more pleased at the comment. "Oh; better than before you left. Anne did yell a little when I told her what you'd said, but it got Alexis to leave her quarters for dinner last night, so she said she'd withhold judgment for now. Matt and Tanya sat with her, glaring at anybody that even looked like they might say something mean, not that there were many — there's been plenty of rumors, but not all that many people actually saw what she did, and up close she just looks like any other scared teenager with protective friends."

"Protective siblings," Tom corrected her gently, smiling at her. He hadn't missed the implication that she liked thinking of Alexis as a sibling, or Anne as a mother figure, or both; trust John to catch that. "You as much as any of the others; and I appreciate it, Lourdes. Never doubt that. We might have a very irregular sort of family — but we _are_ family, and always will be, no matter what the Espheni might do to try and pull us apart."

"Lourdes Delgado Glass-Mason," John muttered under his breath, just loud enough for them to still hear.

Lourdes' hands never faltered in their tasks, but her face was fairly incandescent by now, and she ducked her head. "Thank you," she said softly, then cleared her throat. "So. No bugs. And as far as the ribs go — it looks like you were right; this is mostly just bruising, or at most light strains. You know the drill. Take some aspirin or ibuprofen for the pain and inflammation, apply ice when you get the chance, and try not to stress the ligaments too much; it'll take a couple of weeks to fully heal, but there should be no lasting damage. There's nothing else?"

"Just a few scratches from climbing the fence — which, yes, I do know the drill, but it couldn't be avoided. I'll let John go over those with the witch hazel. So what do you think? Do I pass muster?" He spread his arms carefully.

She rolled her eyes at him and began packing up her gear again. "Get something to eat before your meeting, both of you. It's almost two in the afternoon, but there's still some lunch laid out in the cafeteria; you aren't the only ones whose schedules are a little off today. And Pope; no forgetting the cane this time. Doctor's orders!" She gestured toward the somewhat battered walking aid propped up next to the door.

"Ma'am, yes ma'am," John drawled, casually saluting her; and oh, what a difference that was from the week after Keystone, when John had bristled like a stuck porcupine every time Lourdes so much as walked by Tom's cubicle. Another battle won against the Overlords; another to add to their tally of reasons to hope.

The Volm had turned out to be worryingly fallible, despite their advanced technology; Tom had no doubt the same would prove true of the Dorniya as well, no matter their advanced abilities and tragic backstory. He'd discuss the dreams and his conclusions with the others, and they'd use them to chart a course that would be best for _all_ of their people. But whatever they might decide, he was determined to enjoy every moment he could steal with his family, including the one right there beside him.

He turned to John as Lourdes walked out, leaning across the bed for a lazy, appreciative kiss.

"What was that about?" John asked, cocking his head as Tom got up to get ready.

"I need a reason?" Tom replied with a teasing grin, then regretfully turned to the dresser and began picking out fresh clothes.

* * *

The homecoming mood continued through lunch. The children all crowded in as soon as word passed that Tom was up — probably Lourdes' doing — and he spent the first fifteen minutes just assuring all of them that he was well, introducing Dingaan when he turned up, and observing both the kids' reactions to each other and everyone else's reaction to the kids. Reassuringly, the mood didn't seem to be much warier toward Alexis than it had been around Ben when he'd first been deharnessed; definitely not ideal, but auguring well for future acceptance.

Though the victory in Charlotte was probably also a factor; it had been a huge boost for morale. There was a lot of backslapping and cheering among the other late lunchers as well, and not just for Tom's return, but for the victorious members of the Charlotte assault crew and the dazed-looking refugees who hadn't yet received an upside housing assignment as well. The looks on the newcomers' faces as they went through the food line would have lifted even the heaviest heart; Tom spent another fifteen minutes shaking hands before finally settling.

Dan, entertainingly enough, was already there, more bleary-eyed than he or John and seated very awkwardly between Marina and Captain Marshall. Once or twice, Tom thought he caught an amused, pointed look passing between the women in front of their uncomfortable object of interest; as different as they were, they seemed to have found common ground rather than reenacting the plot of a soap opera. Not that it was any of his business, but ... he'd be very interested to see how that fell out. Tom suspected Jeanne's input would be a significant factor.

"Anyway, Dad," Matt spoke up excitedly as he cleared the last of his plate. "I was looking for something to do last night, so I played with the radio some more; one of the scout groups found a news truck somewhere that could reach the few satellites that are still up. I couldn't find any broadcasts from Brazil — I guess the Volm didn't leave any radios there — but there's a camp in the middle of Arizona about half as big as Charleston! They say the Skitters don't like the desert at _all_. Which is weird, because there's also a bunch in Peru who say Beamers have been crisscrossing the Sechura Desert there and hanging around some place called Tiwanaku for _weeks_ , out near where those geoglyph things are."

"The Nazca lines?" Tom frowned, startled.

"Didn't there used to be tall tales about aliens carving those things? Or natives carving them _for_ aliens?" Hal put in, wandering over to the table with Maggie in tow and a small plate stacked with brownies in hand. Tom had seen someone behind the food line hand it to him with a pointing finger in Tom's direction; he suspected John's handiwork there again.

"More recent theories — at least, those in the most recent journals I read — speculated that they were made for their gods to see, and that the natives worked on them for several hundred years," Tom said, shrugging. "Up through somewhere around ... huh." He sat up straight, wincing briefly as his ribs complained, and rapidly calculated dates in his head.

"Can it possibly be that there's a historical fact you've _forgotten_ , Professor?" John snarked.

"What? Uh; no, it's just ... 500 AD. Fifteen centuries ago. I've heard that before. There was something Cochise said recently — the Espheni have been conquering the galaxy for about that long. If they were here once before ..."

"Whoa," Matt said, eyes wide. "You mean it actually might be important?"

"It might fill in a piece of the story we've been missing," Tom nodded.

"Good job, pipsqueak. All those hours of listening to static finally paying off," Hal drawled, stretching a hand over the table to offer a high five.

Matt blushed, but happily smacked Hal's palm in return. "Thanks, Hal."

The cafeteria doors opened again, and Tom looked up, breaking into a smile at the sight of his missing son. Instead of heading for the food line, Ben scanned over all the diners inside, then echoed Tom's grin as he caught sight of his family.

"Dad! I could hardly believe it when Tector told me you might beat me back here," he exclaimed, hurrying across the crowded room and throwing his arms around Tom for a quick hug. Then he pulled back and casually punched Hal in the arm. "You jerk, you should have said something! I would have wanted to come with."

"Hey, you had your own stuff going on, and I didn't want to get your hopes up in case it took longer than we expected or Dad couldn't get out after all," Hal shrugged unapologetically.

"Whatever," Ben rolled his eyes, then plopped down at the table, snagging a brownie off the plate and biting into it with enthusiasm. Then his eyebrows went up, and he took an eager second bite. "Mmm, hey; s'good!"

"You're welcome," John smirked, then picked another up off the plate and offered it to Tom. "Here, take one."

It did look good; but he saw how few there were. "No; that's all right. I'm not that hungry, and I'm sure there's plenty of other people who'd appreciate it more than I would."

John snorted. "Of all the ridiculous ..." He cut himself off, waving a hand. "Take it anyway. If not because you don't want to hurt my feelings, then for the healing power of chocolate. I've seen the bruises, remember?"

Tanya, who'd been talking quietly with Lexie on the other side of John, laughed loudly at that and injected herself into the conversation. "Healing power? That's _Harry Potter_ , Dad, not the real world."

Belatedly, Tom realized that Tanya was wearing John's Skitter-claw necklace, and wondered that he hadn't picked up on its absence the night before; her dad must have given it to her before the raid. That relationship had definitely come a long way in the last few weeks.

"Hey, who are you to question your old man, huh?" John teased, jostling her with an elbow. "These are _my_ brownies; if I say they've got healing powers, then they damn well have healing powers."

"Amen to that, brother," Tector's voice announced out of nowhere; then an arm still clad in half-gloves and a jean jacket reached past them, snagging the brownie right out of John's hand. "Shouldn't you be hogging the plate to yourself though, in that case? Noticed you're still sportin' the snazzy new accessory." He gestured toward the cane propped against the table between John and Tanya.

"Too much talkin', not enough eatin'," Lyle put in, appearing next to Tector to snatch the brownie in turn. Interestingly, though, he broke it in half before sinking his teeth in ... passing the other half to a smirking blonde standing beside him. John's scavenger, Tom thought; he'd seen a glimpse of her on the bridge before he was taken. Good to see she was settling in already.

"Hey!" John exclaimed, affronted, glaring at the three of them as Tector good-naturedly shoved Lyle and then swiped another off the table. "That was Mason's brownie. Get your own!"

After all the painful memories stirred up by the Dorniya and their metaphoric conversations, it was almost a relief to be reminded of a better pre-war memory by the dessert-related banter; Tom broke into a chuckle and reached for one of the few left on the plate. "How about _I_ get my own. Guess I better see what the big deal is."

It wasn't that he _didn't_ expect it to taste good; everything John made was worth the effort it took to eat. But either he'd forgotten what brownies were supposed to taste like, or it was some sort of ur-brownie the likes of which the world would never see again; Tom's eyes fluttered briefly shut as he took his first bite and the rich sweetness rolled over his tongue. He didn't even know how long it had been since he'd had junk food that didn't come out of a stale three-year-old Hostess package; it was like biting into ambrosia.

"That _is_ amazing," he said, nodding to John, who had a pleased glint in his eye. Then he glanced up at his eldest son. "Reminds me of the time — I don't know if you were old enough to remember this, Hal — when I made the mistake of telling your mother that there was just one thing that my mother had made better than her."

Virtually every adult in earshot groaned at that comment, and Tom laughed. "Yeah, exactly. It was brownies — and over the next several months, she collected every brownie recipe she could find and tried them out, one by one. Constantly refining and perfecting, trying to surpass what my mother had always done from scratch. I thought for sure she'd give up sooner or later — I mean, it was only one recipe."

"Yeah, like it was only one shipment of tea in the harbor, I bet," Maggie commented, wryly.

Hal gave a surprised grunt. "Hey, is that why I thought the word 'brownie' meant any kind of dessert, for the longest time? I have a vague memory of, like, an entire Summer of Chocolate."

"Sounds about right," Tom chuckled in return. "She baked pan after pan after pan, all different recipes, for months until she finally reached her goal. And she _did_ reach her goal. Stubborn woman, your mother."

"I didn't know that," Ben spoke up, in wondering tones. "I mean — I knew she'd always bake her brownies when one of us had a bad day, or we were celebrating something, but I don't remember her ever saying why."

"I do. Kinda, I mean I've forgotten a lot of it, but ..." Matt said in a small voice, looking down at the table. He was prodding at the remnants of his lunch, a distant look on his face. "I asked her some question, something stupid about whether some girl would like me if I wasn't the coolest guy in class, or didn't know how to do something she was interested in, or whatever. So she told me about the brownies." He looked up at Tom then, a bright, shy smile pulling at the corners of his mouth. "It's a good memory."

"It is a good memory," Lexie said quietly, stretching a hand over the table to clasp Matt's. She bit her lip as everyone else turned to look at her as well, then took a breath and continued, meeting Tom's gaze. "I mean ... I know she wasn't _my_ mother. But she's important to all the rest of you, and you never talk about her. If you ever want to, I ... I wouldn't mind hearing more."

She looked older than before, now that Tom had a good look at her; and not just because of the years the last growth spurt had added to her physical body, or the white streak threaded through the dark locks framing her face. She was maturing by leaps and bounds, spirit starting to catch up with her outward form. "Sure, Lexie," he replied, able to deny his daughter nothing. "Once things settle down a little ... I think maybe it is time I aired some of those old, good memories out. Uh, as long as it's all right with your mother?" he added, as he caught sight of Anne approaching, worry lines bracketing her eyes as she glanced between him and her daughter.

"As long as what's all right with me?" Anne asked, lifting her eyebrow as she stopped at the end of the table.

"Just ... telling her stories of our lives before the war?" Matt spoke up before Tom could come up with an answer.

She glanced at Tom again, a wariness in the look that told him she knew that wasn't all of it, but she didn't take it out on Matt; he'd noticed she was pretty good at that sort of silent signaling, now that he was actually paying attention to it. "I don't see why not," she said, smiling at the kids. "But not right now. It's almost three."

"Already?" Lexie said wistfully.

"I'm afraid so, sweetheart," Anne said. Then she tilted her chin at Matt. "You keeping us company in the infirmary today? You left your homework there when we all went out to the bridge, and Jordan dropped by this morning to add yesterday's assignments to the stack."

Matt glanced at Lexie and Tanya, biting his lip, then said, "Yeah, I suppose I should. Are you coming too, Tanya? We could fit in a few more chapters if you want."

Tanya grinned at him. "Eager to see if Hazel's rabbits make it out of Efrafa, huh?"

"If he isn't, _I_ am," Lexie said, smiling at them both.

"Aren't we all," Tom murmured, watching fondly as the three kids got up, continuing to bicker as they took their plates and cups over to the dirty dish trays.

"I figured I'd keep an eye on them while the rest of you are in the meeting," Anne sighed, glancing between him and John. "I've still got a few serious patients from the raid last night, but Roger will be there too; he's helping me run more tests after what happened with Lexie at the bridge. You heard about that?"

"Yeah, John told me. She seems all right though?"

"So far," Anne shrugged, still looking worried. "Fill me in later?"

"Of course," Tom nodded solemnly.

Across the room, he saw Dan glance at the clock and stand up; Marina and Captain Marshall quickly followed.

"Guess that's our cue," John sighed, watching the trio make their way to the door. Then he swiped what was left of the brownies, wrapping them up in a napkin.

"Seriously?" Maggie commented dryly.

"Screw you, sister; like you didn't eat two before the mission. I baked the damn things, I can do what I want with the leftovers," John replied, loftily.

"Except in the case of the President requisitioning necessary resources ... and I'm afraid I'm going to have to do just that," Tom put in, grabbing them out of his hands. Like he was going to let _that_ opportunity go to waste. Then he tucked the package away and picked up his dishware, smirking. "Shall we?"

John took a punch on the arm from Maggie in good humor, chuckling ruefully. "After you, Mr. President. _Sir_."

* * *

Tom was bemused to realize, as they worked their way through the debriefing, that it hadn't even occurred to anyone to bring up Section 4 of the Twenty-Fifth Constitutional Amendment to officially transfer power to Marina during his 'incapacitation'. That was probably a good thing, though; that was one precedent he wasn't exactly eager to set. The government had gone more than forty years without having to declare a president incapacitated without his prior agreement; that would be a hell of a first to add to his already-checkered legacy.

Without a full Congress or an appointed Supreme Court — only a few judges and lawyers had survived the obliteration of the eastern seaboard's major cities to make it to safety in Charleston — John had been right, the New United States government _was_ still mostly 'a bunch of ceremonial bullshit pasted over martial law'. But one day that would no longer be the case, and people were going to start taking this kind of thing seriously again. Whoever ended up writing the story of this rebellion in future history books was going to have a lot of fun figuring out what to include and what to whitewash over as it was.

But despite everything that had happened in the last few weeks, Tom _was_ hopeful, now, that those books _would_ one day be written. And he didn't think he was borrowing on others' faith in saying that. However inadvertently, his people, Cochise, the Dorniya, and even the Espheni had each exposed enough fragments of truth that he'd finally begun to assemble a more complete picture of what was going on; and, more importantly, how the Espheni meant for it to end. And knowing that would be a very big step in figuring out how to stop them.

"So," he said, clearing his throat loudly as the official portion of the briefing wrapped up. He'd shared virtually everything, apart from the information about the Dorniya, including Dingaan's experiences and Cochise's comments about the school he'd seen; that in particular had caused a lot of consternation. "To summarize: we've had a very busy few days. We've learned a lot about our enemy's current strategy, including its weaknesses; and we've taken several hundred more of our people back from captivity, striking a blow and bolstering our own position at the same time. The problem is, that's still a drop in an ocean when you think about the sheer numbers of the enemy worldwide, and the much more advanced tech base they're working from."

"Yeah, but that's always been the case, since the first shot was fired in this war; and look how far we've come," Dan pointed out. "One battle at a time; and lately, we've been winning more than we've lost."

"Yeah, but it's not a question of ability or success rate," John drawled, steepling his fingers on the table. "It's a question of sheer fucking scale. Am I right?"

"Exactly," Tom nodded to him. "We can keep killing Skitters and hornets and disabling their tech — and they'll keep breeding increasingly disturbing bio-creations and building more killing machines. Even if we were able to get world-wide communications up and coordinate with these other resistance groups Matt's been listening in on — there's just too many of them. They're easier to defeat individually, but you won't catch one on its own anymore, and quantity has a quality all its own. Tell me something; when's the last time you spotted a Skitter wearing one of those uniform-type vests they all used to have? You can't, can you? That should tell you something about the investment they're putting into their foot soldiers now."

"Yeah, but why does any of that matter?" Hal commented, frowning. "Weren't you the one who said we don't have to kill them all, we just have to kill enough?"

Tom sighed, nodding to his son. "That's true. But I made that statement based on certain assumptions, among them that they value the lives of their soldiers, and that they could find what they came here for on any planet other than Earth. But no matter how many Skitters we kill, they just breed more, faster; and I've come to believe that their actual objective here _is_ us."

"What do you mean by that?" Marina furrowed her brow.

"Specifically," Tom clarified, "our deaths. They don't intend to leave this world behind until they've either killed every last human being, or made us a part of their war machine."

There was a murmur around the room; then Marina braced her hands on the table and shook her head. "That's a hell of a statement, Tom. What proof do you have of this?"

"Bits and pieces," he shrugged. "I pulled it together from a lot of different sources, including Matt's latest radio report, just this afternoon. But taken all together, it's difficult to ignore the implications." He glanced around the room, then took a deep breath and began. "According to Cochise, the war between the Volm and the Espheni has been going on for several hundred years, since the Espheni drove them off their home planet. They weren't the first race the Espheni conquered, so they don't have any direct knowledge of what came before, but they've picked up a lot of information second hand on the other worlds they've visited. And what they've discovered is that the Espheni were _always_ an exploratory, vicious race, but it wasn't until around fifteen hundred years ago that they became an all-consuming, conquering army. And in all that time, there is only one other planet that they're known to have scorched completely clean of life, like they tried to do here with the grid — the planet whose advanced biological sciences were co-opted to turn its entire surviving population into the first Skitters."

"That's ... interesting information, but I don't quite see how ..." Marina began to interrupt.

"Bear with me." Tom raised a hand, cutting her off as he continued. "Since then, they've obviously converted other populations into Skitters, and have discovered how to breed them as well. But a few of those first Skitters were still with the Espheni invasion force when it first came here. Red Eye — the Skitter who started the rebellion here — was one of them."

Ben cleared his throat then and spoke up. "It's true. He never said anything about it himself, but one of the others who served in the tower in Boston under Karen and her predecessor shared that information with us. That's probably why he was able to reject Espheni control, and help others do the same. And it's also why the rebellion never succeeded before they came to Earth. Both the Volm and the Skitters have said that no other race has fought back as hard as we do. This is the first time Red Eye's faction has had any hope of long-term survival."

"Unfortunately, the Espheni were already prepared for that to some degree," Tom continued. "That's why they spent so long observing us before they struck, and why they bombed so many of our cities and military bases before invading. And why, if you really think about the things they've done, it becomes apparent that they're doing far more than just trying to kill us off in the most expedient manner ... they're going out of their way to be cruel in the process. The reason for that, I believe, is that they've been here before."

"Those Nazca things in Peru," John frowned. "You said the natives made 'em for their gods to see, centuries ago. But we're talking guys with spears and arrows; what could _they_ have done to piss off the fishheads that much?"

"Now that, I don't know," Tom shrugged. "Remember, though, that this was before they had Skitters; maybe even before mechs, since nothing like them shows up in the native artwork. All I know is that fifteen hundred years ago, the culture that made the Nazca lines stopped making more; and around the same time, the Espheni began conquering the known universe. And since they arrived on Earth, they've spent an inordinate amount of time doing otherwise inexplicable things like kidnapping a bunch of resistance leaders, offering to let them lead their people to reservations, then slaughtering them in the middle of a random field. Stealing children and enslaving them — either with a harness, or by brainwashing them via something out of the Hitler Youth playbook. Lecturing us about the fact that oppression is in our nature, before offering us choices that aren't really choices at all. Remember the Mega-mechs, as well — Cochise recognized them, and told us they were typically used against worlds more advanced than ours. But the main Espheni fleet left only a few days after it arrived, and none of those ships have been back since. That means everything they've fought with, they either brought with them, or built from scrap — and those mechs are made of a metal not found on Earth. So why did they bring them in the first place, if they were going to wait another two years to use them? They're toying with us. Killing time. Because — and this is more speculation, but I think it's founded — something, or someone, else is coming."

General Porter's mouth was a grim line. "Just like we thought the Skitters were the true enemy, until we got a glimpse of an Espheni. You think the Espheni came to conquer the place for some kind of ... Super-Overlord?"

 _She comes, she comes_ , the scientist Skitter had said; and so had the Dorniya, in echoing that memory. Somehow, Tom didn't think they'd been referring to _her_ — the one impersonating Rebecca.

"I think the invasion fleet will be coming back, sooner rather than later. And when it does ... we might not like what it brings with it," he said, shrugging.

"So, what. Are we just supposed to give up?" Maggie objected, sounding angry. "I don't believe that. Least of all from you, after you just told us the plan for taking out the damn power plant on the moon. Maybe it'll only give us a breather for a little while — but we're not a few hundred underarmed civilians hiding in a school anymore."

Tom blew out a breath. "No, I'm not suggesting that. We might not be able to save everyone, but that just makes every life we do save, and every enemy combatant we kill that might have gone on to kill more of us, more important. I'm simply saying that, as with the Volm and the grid, we might have to accept outside assistance again if we hope to free our world from the Espheni within our lifetimes."

"You're talkin' about those Last Mothers. The ones that scientist Skitter mentioned. The last of the Doorknockers, or whatever you called 'em," Dan added, crossing his arms over his chest.

Tom nodded. He didn't intend to bring up the part about the changes to Alexis' DNA, let alone his, with anyone who didn't already know — that would just add unnecessary complications to what was already going to be a hard sell. But the rest of it had to be said.

"The question is, whether we want to risk whatever the cost will be for their assistance. It was worth it with the Volm, in the end; we got a lot of technology out of it, even if that wasn't their intention, and their bailing on us after the grid came down didn't leave us any worse off than we were already. But the Dorniya are a much bigger unknown. One of them managed to send me a message when I was a prisoner in Greensboro, and implied that they have some kind of silver bullet, Hail Mary attack in the works, to take out whatever's coming when it arrives. The Espheni are apparently all connected through something called the 'shadow plane', the means they use to contact one another over long distances; whatever the Dorniya intend to do, they intend to use that connection to affect the enemy all at once. But they need my help to do so, and they've been vague about the details."

There was a lot of murmuring at that, and several of the others threw side-eyed glances at John, as if expecting him to explode and voice their doubts for them. Tom hadn't been the only one relying on him for that in the past.

"So which is it?" John said, ignoring the others as he locked gazes with Tom, eyes dark and intent. "Embrace these new aliens, in the hopes of living a little longer; or tell 'em to find another patsy? A year ago, you would've already made that call, and only deigned to inform us as and when you felt it necessary."

"Well, a lot's changed in the last year," Tom replied with a wry half-smile and a significant pause. "...Primarily, of course, the fact that we no longer have a mole exposing our every plan to the enemy."

"Uh-huh." The corner of John's mouth curled up at that, responding eloquently to what Tom hadn't said.

"Wait, wait," Ben broke in, frowning heavily. "Back up. Before the disturbing flirting. You said the _shadow plane_? The connection that Denny and I — that our spikes, I mean — use to hook up to the rebel Skitters? The connection that the rebel Skitters themselves are hooked into _permanently_? How are the Dorniya going to avoid hurting _us_ when they attack the Espheni?"

Tom's blood ran cold as he processed the implications, all thought of teasing John fled from his mind. He hadn't thought that far ahead yet, too focused on piecing the history together and trying to avoid repeating mistakes in the present to look at more than the broad strokes of potential consequences.

He shook his head. "Good question. As I said, they've been vague on the details; just feeling me out on the general concept. But I didn't want to make a decision — even on whether to press them for more — without broaching the subject with all of you, first. Personally," he sighed, glancing around the table, "the longer this war drags on, the more I do believe we'll need outside help to successfully take back our world; and taking advantage of the Dorniya's desire for vengeance seems like an opportunity it would be a mistake to let pass by. But after what happened with the Volm, I don't want to risk missing any loopholes or potential negative fallout, either. If any of the rest of you have concerns, speak up — don't wait for someone else to say something."

That got the conversation going again, halting at first but full of good questions. No one brought up Alexis, though there were a few questions directed at Tom as to why they'd chosen him — but after he reminded them about Red Eye, that subject was left to lie in favor of speculations that ran increasingly far afield. After several minutes of that, General Porter cleared his throat and stood, staring around until everyone quieted back down.

"All right. So far, the only thing we all seem to agree on is that we don't have enough information _to_ agree on. Tom, if you'd be willing to gather more intel the next time they're in contact, and report back — to Ms. Peralta, Colonel Weaver and I at a minimum — we could revisit the question then?"

"And what if they want an answer right away?" John asked, skeptically.

"I tell them we don't make decisions that way," Tom shrugged. "Whatever they're waiting for isn't here yet, and as they say they can't act without our help ..."

"That gives us the whip hand; more than we had with Cochise's dad, at least. I vote yeah," Maggie nodded.

"Doesn't seem like we have much in the way of other options," John shrugged.

A chorus of agreement followed, some supportive and others reluctant as the question bounced around the table; but in the end, no one dissented.

"Sounds like I have my orders," Tom concluded. Then he glanced up at the clock, not surprised to see that several hours had passed. "I won't keep you any longer; I have other things to attend to, and I'm sure you all do as well. Don't hesitate to bring me any further questions or concerns, though; whatever the ultimate outcome, we _are_ making a difference in this war, and we saved a lot of lives today. Gentlemen; ladies."

There were moments it was good to be President; this wasn't exactly one of them. But the warmth in John's expression as everyone parted ways to take care of necessary business was better than any public acclaim, in Tom's opinion.

He nodded back, then followed Dan and the promised paperwork to his office.

Looming threat or not, he wasn't just surviving anymore. As unbelievable as it might seem ... life did go on.

-(9/10)-


	10. Keeping to the Green Path

_"May there be no blame, obstacle, want, or misery; let no deceiver come behind or before them; may they neither be snared nor wounded, nor seduced, nor burned, nor diverted below the road or above it; may they neither fall over backward nor stumble; keep them on the Green Road, the Green Path."_  
— Popul Vuh, Part Five

* * *

The week immediately following the liberation of Charlotte was probably the most frustrating of John's life. He'd been angrier before, more dissatisfied and discontented, especially during the rougher stretches between the Second Mass' retreat from Boston and their settling in Charleston when it had felt like he was the only sane man left in the group, but for sheer hair-pulling value there was no comparison.

For one, the damn aliens wouldn't leave Tom alone. If it wasn't Cochise interrupting the only five minutes they'd managed to be awake and alone in the same place all day just so the bubblehead could report he'd sent a message to his daddy, it was the Dorniya beaming their messages straight into Tom's head. And not just when he was asleep, either; there was a look he got when he was seeing the ghost of his dead wife that John was learning to recognize, something pinched and stricken that sapped any joy in the moment right out of him. It wasn't even as if they justified the intrusion with good news, either; just more of the same cryptic bullshit as before. Which had led to Ben cornering Tom with a really awkward conversation about 'the good of the many'.

Yeah, like that was going to fucking happen. Personally, John wouldn't give a rat's ass if the rebel Skitters all went down with the rest of their disgusting species, but Tom was the type to get skittish — play on words absolutely intended — about the concept of genocide, and that wasn't even touching what it would do to him to sacrifice one of his own children. On behalf of everyone else who gave a damn about him, no thank you.

Which reminded him of something else that hadn't been happening: the fucking. And not because of any empty threat he might have made during their last argument about making Tom sleep on the couch, either; that had been long forgotten by the time they'd kissed and made up. John had bit the bullet, packed the rest of his shit up and hauled it underground, and even gave Lyle permission to take over the medbus so he could get out of the bachelor's quarters. And half the time, he and Mason barely even managed to get their boots off before they collapsed exhausted into bed.

So much for moving in being a big fucking deal; far as he could tell, all he'd done was trade his valued privacy for a shorter commute and an octopus-armed nighttime space heater.

There were a few bright spots, though. Though he'd be damned if he said as much to Mason.

Spending more time with Tanya, who smiled a little more at him every day, and laughingly refused to give him back his trophy necklace. Helping refit the grid gun to travel on a Caterpillar chassis; working on the BFG was enough to get any gun nut a little hot under the collar. And then there was the spectacle of Dr. Kadar and his slow, awkward pursuit of Anne Glass. Now that Tom's new buddy Dingaan was around to help keep the utilities going, and some chemist named Marty had been picked up with his kids by one of the patrols, the basement-dwelling scientist had a lot more time on his hands. He seemed content to spend most of it with Alexis and her mother, as John had hoped ... and Anne wasn't exactly trying to get away, either. It was revoltingly sweet, and cut down ninety percent on the lingering side-eyed glances she used to give Tom. Win, win in John's book.

Killing cooties, too: three days after they stole several hundred prisoners out from under the fishheads, a fresh wave of Skitters, mechs, and hornets made another strike at Charleston. With Marshall and Fisher's people there to help shore up the defensive line — several of which proved to be at least as accurate with a Beamer-killer as the Second Mass' human snipers, including Fisher herself — the attackers didn't get close enough to plant any more fence posts or fill any more occupied streets with rubble, but there was still plenty of slaughter to go around. John may have got his daughter back, but now that he no longer had to guess at his son's fate, never mind the losses he'd seen since… yeah, he doubted he'd ever get tired of taking those bastards out up close and personal.

Partying with the Berserkers afterward had been as sweet as ever, too. He might sleep under Popetown now rather than in their midst, but he still fought with 'em, bled with 'em, ragged on Lyle for going sweet on the woman who'd drugged him and stole Tector's horse, counted on 'em to look after the folks who mattered when he asked — and they returned that loyalty in full measure. Well, apart from the expected coarse jokes and ill-timed bets one could expect from such a motley bunch. The only time they'd ever really let him down had been in the middle of his snit with Tom, back when the man had strolled into camp after a three months' absence and sucked away all the authority John had managed to assemble in the meantime. And worse — he hadn't even needed to lift a finger to make it happen. No surprise which side they'd chosen, looking back, though it had burned like acid at the time.

If you can't beat 'em, join 'em; that had been Tom's tactic back then, and from a certain perspective, that was what John was doing now, down in the armory with Tom's eldest going over their gear for the next assault. How the wheel turned. Hathaway's folks had been pressing, and Mason had been worried about what the Espheni might have in mind for the man as well; given that they still didn't know when or if the Volm mothership could come back to take down the power plant, Porter and Weaver had greenlighted the trip north.

Though since the element of surprise was already lost, they'd be switching it up a little this time. They'd be taking a route that bypassed Greensboro and heading straight for Richmond, leaving the newly mobile BFG on home guard and taking some of the newly tested goodies from Cochise's treasure chest instead. Concussion ordnance capable of turning boulders to sand should sever those tethers easily enough.

He chuckled to himself, and Hal looked up from the next table over, where he was loading mech metal-jacketed bullets into clips for his own gear-out.

"Something funny?"

John shrugged. "Depends on your point of view, I suppose. It's just ... sometimes I wonder how the hell I ended up here. But then I figure, considering all the far more likely alternatives, better not tempt fate even asking the question. Your dad tells me I'm his counterbalance, you know; but he's been my fixed point since, God, probably the day we met. Took him long enough to get his head out of his ass, but it worked out for the best. We'd probably have torn each other apart, or killed each other eventually, if it had fallen out any different."

"I think you have that a little backward," Hal scoffed, a smirk turning up one corner of his mouth. Then he paused, eyeing John more seriously. "You know ... I've still got my eye on you, and it's gonna stay that way until I'm _sure_ this really isn't just some elaborate long con, but I think I get it, now."

"You think so, huh?" John stared at the kid, surprised. Of Tom's three sons, Hal had been the one he'd fully expected to hold a grudge 'til doomsday; he certainly deserved it. "And what exactly do you think you get?"

Hal just shook his head. "I dunno. It's just ... we all saw it coming with Anne a mile away. We met her just before the group we were with got snapped up by the Second Mass — she was triaging a bunch of survivors in a park, they got attacked when we were nearby, and Dad stopped to help her evacuate her patients. They just latched onto each other after that and didn't really look at anyone else. But you better believe I had a skeptical eye on that, too; we'd just lost our Mom, she'd just lost her family, I wasn't down for putting up with some rebound relationship just because Dad thought we needed a female role model in our lives, you know?"

"So what changed your mind about _her_?" Because clearly, he had; every last one of the Mason kids had been as angry over Tom leaving Anne in the first place as they had been about him hooking up with John. Less for the littler ones, maybe; but even Matt had been a little squirrely until Tom made it clear he could still call Anne whatever he wanted.

Hal grinned at that, a sharp, dangerous smile that was probably part of why Maggie had gone for a younger guy like him in the first place. He might still be a dumbass teenager, but he had that carbon-steel edge under the surface that Tom had bequeathed to all his children to one degree or another. "Believe it or not? When we figured out the best plan to get Ben back would involve me sneaking into his group with Ricky's cut-off harness strapped to my back. She didn't know Ben; knew Matt more than she did me; hadn't ever fired a gun. But she said she wouldn't let me go in there without every possible advantage. So she grabbed a scalpel, stepped into the cage with the Skitter Dad had dragged back to the school, and stabbed it through the mouth like a total badass."

"She's the one that figured that move out, huh?" John raised his eyebrows. Good for her; he could be a little more magnanimous now that he knew she wasn't threatening his position. "So you figured she was more than just a temporary distraction for your dad."

Hal let that lie a second while he filled a backpack with the clips he'd just finished loading, then cast another sharp look at John. "You know, back in the winter of 1774 to 1775, before they'd even drafted the Declaration of Independence, a bunch of colonists broke into the British armory here in Charleston? They didn't really have any industry for making guns on this side of the ocean yet, but they already knew trouble was coming, and there were all these poorly guarded military facilities stocked to the brim with weapons and powder."

John had an idea where Hal was going with that, but considering the way the kid had opened the conversation, he was willing to humor him. "Gave up on Harry Potter anecdotes, huh? Or do I detect the historical obsessions of a certain Tom Mason in this particular lecture?" he snarked good-naturedly.

Hal chuckled. "Yeah, how'd you guess? He filled my ears on the subject for a while, back when I asked him what was _really_ going through his head when he asked Doc Kadar to modify all those guns with Volm tech, before Jacksonville."

John remembered asking Tom the same thing himself; accusing him of stealing a whole damn armory for John. Remembered Tom's reaction to that, too.

"And did he satisfy your curiosity?" he had to ask.

Hal raised a pointed eyebrow at him, and smirked. "What do you think? But I'm not stupid, you know."

John cleared his throat gruffly, and looked back down at the weapons he'd been cleaning on autopilot. "Well, I think that's about enough on that topic, Junior. But for the record ... I've got no intention of going anywhere. Even if it _does_ mean there's a real danger of the woman who killed my scumbag brother ending up my step-daughter-in-law. Can't wait to see her face the day _that_ penny drops."

Now the kid was the one going a little red in the face, and it was John's turn to smirk; Hal seemed torn whether to react to the killer comment or the in-law one. Mason-baiting; _still_ the sport that kept on giving.

"Hey, and that's enough on _that_ topic," Hal sputtered. "No matter what happens with Dad, if you think I'm ever going to call _you_ Dad, or anything like it, you've got another think coming."

John laughed. "Never crossed my mind. I'm not stupid either, kid."

"Exactly," Hal replied, shooting him another wry look.

Christ, getting the seal of approval from a nineteen-year-old. "All right, whatever; enough bonding time already."

Hal snickered, then shouldered his pack and turned to leave. He stopped at the door, though, looking back with a pensive expression. "Is Dad really doing okay? I know he's said the Dorniya are still being cryptic, and he's hoping tonight's action will distract the Espheni enough for them to risk a clearer connection ... but he seems ... I dunno. More tense than he's saying. Not as bad as right after you guys hiked back from the plane crash, but ... still."

John shook his head. Not a conversation he really wanted to have with Tom's offspring, when he was barely getting any private conversation with Tom himself. But maybe he could use the opening to head another problem off at the pass. "Talk to your brother about that one. When your dad gets on a 'sacrifice for the greater good' kick, it's one thing; but when one of his kids comes at him with it ..." He whistled between his teeth.

Hal's expression went blank and stiff at that. "Ben," he growled under his breath, making a fist at his side. Then he gave John an apologetic grimace. "Uh, thanks, but ..."

"Don't mention it. Really, _don't_ ," John waved him off.

...Then about choked, realizing what he'd just done. That had gone beyond intervention to make his own life easier, and straight into the dreaded co-parenting territory. And not for the pair that actually _liked_ him, either. He sighed, shaking his head at himself, and went back to work.

* * *

They struck Richmond that night much the same way they'd struck Charlotte, but with the grid gun exchanged for the services of a sapper party sent out in a stealthed Jeep a few days before. The only sticky point on the trip up was when they bypassed Greensboro; they didn't want to have to fight a second army before they even reached their goal, and the tracks they were using were almost within sight of the green-fenced enclosure. They throttled it down, muffled the heat as best they could, doused the lights, and crept on by; they didn't figure the same trick would work on the way back, but the longer it took the Espheni to twig to their actual target, the better.

The planning paid off when they reached Richmond; the concussion grenades from Cochise's party box made an even nicer boom than they'd anticipated, knocking mechs down like ninepins and severing the tether like a charm. The lying-in-wait time also meant the bombers had had time to build a makeshift tree-based slingshot to aim one up into the circling ship's engines; they set it off at the same time they cut the power, a much more satisfactory set of pyrotechnics than the last any of them had seen in the city, when the Second Mass had stumbled into the middle of a death match between opposing squads of Skitters on their original trip south.

The ambush party waiting for them was caught a little off-guard when all the explosions went off at once, and with their overlord distracted by all the crashing and dying, plowing through the attacking mechs and Skitters was even easier than it had been the last time. With Weaver camped on top of Tom back home, playing topside commander for the retaliatory attack they were expecting, Captain Marshall was technically in command of the soldiers; but Cap had reassigned all the irregulars, including Hal and Ben's groups, back under John's authority. They had themselves a _hell_ of a good time rolling in over the disoriented wardens.

But that was when they hit the first bad news of the night: there were a lot fewer people behind those fences than they'd been expecting. There were almost no adult men or women under thirty-five to be seen, which eliminated most of the people Marshall had been looking for; only the visibly crippled, the middle-aged and the old, and a handful of kids too young to feed themselves were left to come out of hiding at the megaphone's call. And just as they were starting to get those loaded, the second piece of bad news arrived.

If John had doubted Tom's assertion that the Espheni were deliberately dicking them around, that night's events would have put paid to it. He didn't know what the _fuck_ the tall, skinny aliens had done to Hathaway, but the man that had walked up holding the hand of a harnessed kid with a fresh wave of escorting mechs and Skitters behind him sounded like a wind-up doll, not the former leader of the free world. It was creepier than even what they had done to Karen.

The Earth was a gift, and they must protect it with their Espheni brothers? Yeah, he was calling a flag on _that_ play. Though the sad part was, there were probably people out there who wouldn't even need the brainwashing to agree; ivory tower ninnies who'd never had to live in the real world before the fishheads broke it. Thank fuck Tom had never been _that_ sort of professor.

It would probably be a kindness to put a bullet through Hathaway's skull. But John knew better than to expect Marshall not to shoot him in turn — or Tom not to be disappointed, later. Good thing he still had his Volm pistol, and knew how to switch it to stun. He opened fire in the middle of the man's speech, then returned the weapon to burn 'em down mode and picked off the nearest enemy Skitter over the sound of Marshall's angry yells.

They lost three of hers and six of his in the ensuing firefight, and a whole cluster of refugees when the mechs started deliberately targeting helpless civilians rather than fighters. And they were still occupied with taking the last of that group down when the third piece of bad news came winging in, the Beamer response time much quicker than it had been at Charlotte.

"SNIPERS!" John called out over the din, the minute the scout reported back over a crackly short-distance walkie-talkie. They'd been expecting to have to fend off fliers, but not that quick; everyone was still busy with the refugees. "Snipers, incoming to the west!"

Denny wasn't with them that night — she was playing D with Weaver's bunch — but Ben, Tector, Ox and Hal all ran for the heavy weapons. Hal's experience was more with a mounted .50 cal, but he could brace and aim well enough, and those four were the closest; John took up one of the anti-aircraft guns as well, skidding into position just in time to lift it and brace against a broken wall, wincing against a faint twinge from his still-healing ankle.

"We can't let any of them report which direction we're going after this!" he heard Marshall calling; good, she'd got her crew in gear, too.

"Don't let 'em get any shots off either!" he called; and then they were on 'em, half a dozen glowing winged shapes stooping in like a swarm of oversized, blue-assed fireflies.

They didn't have time to carefully aim; they just poured fire into the sky until every last one of the craft was raining down in pieces somewhere on the far side of the tracks. It was a good thing there _weren't_ as many people to get out of the city as they'd been expecting, or they'd definitely have lost some to the shrapnel.

He limped over to Marshall after the last one fell, holding both hands up in apology. "Time to make a decision, Lady Cap."

He let her land the first punch, then wiped the blood away from his split lip and caught the next wild fist. "Easy, easy now. He's all right, not that I know what you expect to do with him; you really think people are gonna follow a guy preaching brotherhood with the Overlords? One of your guys should —"

"He's alive! The President's alive!" he heard Lieutenant Shelton calling from behind him, and winced.

"...Yeah, be figuring that out right about now."

Marshall wrested her fist free, then wiped sweat away from her forehead with the back of one blood-streaked hand. "Don't call me Lady Cap," she replied, heatedly. "And don't you _ever_ aim a weapon at the President again!"

"Got him out of the line of fire, didn't it?" he shrugged, not wanting to restart the 'not my President' argument again, and jerked his chin toward the train. "And like I said — time to make a decision. We taking the option to hit Greensboro on the way back, or not?"

She scowled at him, staring at him for a long moment while she wrestled her temper under control, then sighed and shook her head. "Dan said you were an argumentative son-of-a-bitch, but that you usually had a point. Suppose I've seen that for myself, though I don't think much of your methods. What do you recommend?"

"I'd say hit 'em," he shrugged, "but that'd put the refugees we just picked up in harm's way. And in a week or so, these fences might all come right down anyway, if the Volm hold up their end of the deal. We had a specific goal here, with Hathaway; I'd hate to lose more of our own to no real purpose."

Her lips thinned as she thought that over; then she nodded, regretfully. "Full speed back to Charleston, then. And God help the people of Greensboro. Maybe they'll leave them alone, if they don't think we want them."

That was wishful thinking, John was sure; but let her have her delusions. He gave her a sloppy, casual salute, then turned back to yell to his guys — who seemed to be shepherding a crotchety old lunatic with what looked like half an apartment's worth of junk in tow. What the hell? "Get your asses in gear, people! THIS AIN'T AMERICAN PICKERS, YOU WANT TO SAVE YOUR LIFE OR YOU WANT TO SAVE YOUR ARMOIRE?"

He got a few raised middle fingers for his efforts, but it did light a fire under 'em; he might not have Weaver's or even Mason's leadership style, but it got the job done.

Well, one part of it, at least. The risk of a neutron strike on the train was no joke, and there was no guarantee the fishheads wouldn't finally clue in and bomb the tracks before they could make it back home. He didn't even want to think about trying to move so many people in vehicles salvaged on the fly with only what aging diesel they could salvage from the train. And with the fate of Schrödinger's President still uncertain, if in a different way than before, the command structure in Charleston was still in question as far as Marshall's people were concerned.

Still. Another battle won, another victory to bring home to lay at Tom's feet. No dead mice or floral bouquets for John Pope, no sir. Now if only he could think of a way to take advantage of the Dorniya's interference without doing something that would either leave them indentured to yet another alien overlord for the rest of their lives, or result in Tom Mason tearing himself apart afterward ...

Well, there'd be time enough to worry about that when they were all home again. John fingered the comm in his pocket, then regretfully let it go. Unfortunately, giving Greensboro a pass meant holding EMCON on the return trip to keep their signal footprint low; neither side would break it unless the situation was dire. Hopefully, the current silence meant that whatever had come at Charleston that night hadn't proven too hot to handle.

An idea glimmered in the back of John's mind at that thought; a quote he'd seen somewhere recently about communication. Gongs and drums, banners and flags — hadn't that been from the book he'd borrowed off Tom's shelves? He'd have to remember to bring it up to him. Later.

He holstered the Volm pistol again and took up a long rifle as the next wave of Beamers came into view, threatening the last stragglers streaming into the train. "INCOMING!"

One more day after the apocalypse. Saving the planet, one dead alien at a time.

* * *

They ended up fending off four more Beamer attacks before cruising down out of the Piedmont onto the coastal plain; two from the west, one from the northeast, and one — the last, and least numerous of them — from the south. Fleeing from Charleston, John figured when he saw the obvious damage on two of the three craft. The second flight had got close enough to fire on the train and damage one of the cars stuffed with refugees, but this one didn't; Ben and Tector, the current snipers on shift, managed to knock all three down in short order.

The city, he soon saw as they got closer, hadn't gotten off so lightly. A rock formed in his throat as he saw the wreck of the main bridge creating a new shoal in the Ashley River — dropped by the defenders, if he had to guess — and several plumes of smoke rising from newly shattered buildings. The rail bridge was still intact, and the sentry posts looked manned, but the city had obviously seen a heavy pounding. The wreckage of several Beamers smoked here and there amid the fresh debris. And perhaps most telling, when they pulled into the rail sheds at last, the BFG was missing ... and so was _his_ President.

 _Peralta_ was the one there to greet them, in fact, arm in a sling and a butterfly bandage on her brow. John clenched his jaw as he jumped down from the train, staring at her in consternation.

The VP gave him a wan smile as she glanced down the length of the train, assessing the damage they'd picked up and the number of obviously occupied cars. "Mr. Pope. Captain Marshall," she said, nodding to the uniformed woman as she stepped down after John. "Was your mission successful?"

"More or less," John replied, gruffly. "I see you had the expected trouble here?"

Behind them, the refugees began to disembark; Marshall turned to bark a quick order to her lieutenants and the waiting guards, and the usual orderly dance of mission aftermath began, just a little more slowly than usual.

Peralta nodded, tightly. "You were right; they planned for being hit again, anticipating that the majority of our weaponry would be on the raid. The attacking force was larger than any we'd yet seen, and the Beamers were all loaded with bombs rather than fence posts, one of which impacted at the entrance to the stairwell nearest the conference rooms before we could get the grid gun in position. As you can see, we're still in a bit of disarray."

John swallowed, wondering just how many people they'd lost in that night's work. "No shit, Sherlock," he said, then rolled his eyes a glare from Marshall and corrected himself. "I mean, Madam Vice President."

The title seemed to distract Peralta from the vulgarity, though; her brow furrowed, and she glanced past him toward the train. "When you say more or less — do you mean you retrieved President Hathaway?"

"All in one piece, though I wouldn't recommend letting him at a weapon or a radio anytime soon," he replied, impatiently. "A few anti-psychotics probably wouldn't go amiss, either. Look, if you want to keep on playing twenty questions, I'm game, but I think you know who we were expecting to see here. So if you'll excuse me ..."

Peralta reached out to lay a hand on his arm as he went to storm by, then glanced over at Marshall, her expression sympathetic. "Dan was caught on the fringe of the blast; he seems to be all right, though Anne was concerned he was showing symptoms of a mild heart attack. She wants to keep him overnight."

"I'm sure that went over well," Marshall observed dryly, though her face was drawn with worry.

"Yes, well. Perhaps better than it might have been; I believe he thinks it's mostly to humor her while Lexie and Tom are in there, as well. Lexie exhausted herself blocking most of the debris that would have flooded the stairwell with her ... abilities ... until Dr. Kadar and Mr. Botha could blow it back the other way, and Tom became unresponsive about the same time the strike began. He said something of the kind might happen; do you know what he was talking about?"

The fucking Dorniya. "Maybe," he said. "He thought those new aliens might contact him again. I'll leave Marshall with you for the full run-down; where's the new infirmary?"

"Where the group housing was in the department store space nearest the cafeteria; we finished switching everything over just before we ran the evacuations again," she nodded to him, mouth still pinched. "One of you ought to have told me that this contact was telepathic in nature!"

"Yeah, well, I'm working on him, but you know how Tom is," John said grimly, sharing a commiserating look with the woman.

...Sharing a commiserating look with the woman. Christ. All that bullshit he'd been feeding people about secretly being a productive member of their society; had the joke been on him all along?

...Maybe there was something to all that 'perception becomes the reality' business, after all.

* * *

John had seen what the new hospital space had looked like before its transformation, and the current color scheme was definitely an improvement over both its former appearance and the previous infirmary. The walls were now a soothing shade of washed-out denim blue, complementing the plastic sheets still in use as dividers, and the ceiling was a neutral color closer to sand than beige. Someone had actually taken the time to lay tile over the concrete floor and hang patriotic art prints in every cubicle as well, salvaged from God only knew where; the result was a lot more comfortable than it had any right to be, considering the purpose of the place.

John split off from the group of incoming injured the first chance he got, sticking his nose into individual cubicles until he found Lexie — still curled up, sleeping the sleep of the exhausted — and Tom, sprawled out on a pair of beds. Weaver looked up from the chair next to Tom's as John stalked in. He looked a little more pale and worn than usual, but otherwise more stubborn than ever; John wished Anne luck in trying to force him to rest.

"Good, you're back," he greeted John, cantankerously. "So tell me — what the hell is this shit?"

He gestured to Tom, who was shifting and muttering almost constantly atop the sheets, strapped down at knees and elbows to keep him from wriggling right off the bed. The clearest word that John could discern was 'No'; not a good sign in terms of finding a solution to the problem, but at least it meant he was still in there fighting.

"You think I know any better than you?" he snorted. "Aliens don't like what he has to say, I suppose — or vice versa; we both know he can be a stubborn jackass when he feels like it. They're fucking _aliens_ , anyway; no telling what might set them off. I wish we could just kill 'em all and let their _own_ deities sort 'em out."

"Believe me, there are times I wish that, too," Weaver sighed, rubbing a hand over his jaw. Then he gestured to the bed again. "Since this don't seem to be working, how about you give waking him up a try?"

"Seriously?" John gave him a nonplused look. "And how do you suppose I'm gonna do that? It's not like there's a manual for any of this shit."

Weaver wrinkled his nose, wearing an annoyed, long-suffering expression. "He's got at least a subconscious awareness of what's going on around him — once we realized that, we tried bringing Matt in here, but that just got him agitated. And when the rest of us try, all we get is varying degrees of 'don't worry'. Like he's convinced he's gotta protect us. You got tricks in your bag that the rest of us don't, though; so, get to it."

"All right, all right, don't get your panties in a wad — since I'm reliably informed that would be bad for your health," John snarked back. Then he sighed and approached closer to the bed, staring down into Tom's pale, sweating face. He remembered seeing all the kiddos come in and bond with Tom last time he'd been out for a while, laying hands on him one by one; looked like it was his turn, now.

"Here goes nothin'," he said, and reached out to brush the hair back from Tom's forehead. "Hey, asshole ..."

"Pope!" Weaver interrupted, scowling at him. "Insulting him's not really what I had in mind."

"It's _me_ , Cap. You think he'd believe I'd come after him all sweetness and light?" John scoffed. Then he turned back to the figure in the bed, cupping a hand along the side of Tom's face, and tried to block out awareness of anything else. It wasn't hard; the man looked incredibly vulnerable lying there, a target for anyone who wanted to come at him. Made John want to punch everyone who'd ever intentionally hurt him — himself not excluded from that number.

"Yeah, you heard me, Mason," he said, letting the words flow as they came. "What kind of welcome home is this, huh? I bring Hathaway back to you, against all odds, even against logic, and find you sacked out in a room with someone who isn't me. Was that because you didn't think I'd succeed, or because you were afraid that _you_ would? You know, a guy could start to feel unwanted around here ..."

Something weird happened to his head as he said the last few words; a strange pull seemed to emanate from the figure on the bed, combined with a foreign sense of frustration and indignation. Tom's alien shit, maybe? A spike of irrational fear went through him at the contact — and then the world seemed to go all wavy and hazy, and the bed looked really comfortable —

"Goddamnit, ANNE!" he thought he heard Weaver yell, behind him.

Why would he call him Anne? John wondered muzzily as he grabbed for Tom's arm. The whole point of the thing was that he _wasn't_ Anne ...

And then he was blinking his eyes open again, somewhere he _definitely_ hadn't been a moment before.

* * *

It only took John a few seconds to realize what must have happened when the freshly painted walls of the infirmary were replaced with the darker blue of a familiar bedroom in Boston. The sheer weirdness of it, however, took a little longer to get over.

"What the hell, Mason?" he blurted, backing away from his lover and dropping his hand. He'd apparently popped into existence in Tom's inner world in the same position he'd been in the outer one, only with both of them upright — and a lot more animation in Tom's wide-eyed expression. "Did you just suck me into the Matrix?"

The dream version of Mason — or vision, whatever — was dressed a lot like the real one; as was John, when he took a second to look down at himself. Was this the way they really thought of each other — was that how this worked? Or was it the way they thought of themselves? Or the alien's image of them? Or had he just passed out and started hallucinating? He really didn't think he was _that_ imaginative, though.

Tom blinked at him; then his expression went cold and hard as he turned toward the doorway behind John.

"No," he said, with a level of loathing in his voice John hadn't heard from him in months; he'd almost forgotten how it felt to hear that tone directed his way. "I've put up with you borrowing Rebecca's face, because I understand the necessity of it. But you do _not_ get to use his, too. Or are you no better than Karen?"

John blinked, then glanced over his shoulder — and went cold and still himself as he saw the woman standing there. He'd caught a glimpse of the photo the princes passed between themselves, so he knew immediately whose face he was seeing, but the flat, creased image hadn't done justice to the reality. Rebecca Mason was a fine-looking redhead, with a wealth of long hair that curled at the ends, professional women's attire and the graceful posture to go with it, a thin necklace around her throat ... and a distinctly puzzled expression. He could see, now, why they said Hal was the one that looked most like his mother, despite his coloring being the closest to Tom's; their features were a lot alike, and he'd learned to read Hal Mason pretty well over the last few years.

She didn't directly answer Tom's question; instead she looked John over, then frowned like any woman finding a strange man in her house in her husband's company. "Were we expecting guests tonight? I'd have appreciated a little more warning, if only because I didn't plan for dinner for six."

Tom hissed in a breath. "If you think that I'm just going to let it go ..." he began, through clenched teeth.

John glanced between the two again, remembering what Tom had said about his previous encounters with the Dorniya, and snagged Tom's arm in a firm grip. "Whoa, whoa," he interrupted. "I don't think she _did_ do this. I mean it, whatever. What happened just before I showed up?"

Tom turned to him again, eyes wild with a tangle of furious emotions. He glanced from John's face to his hand on his forearm and then back to the alien in the doorway, voice as tense as strung piano wire. "You _know_ what happened. You said I wasn't paying sufficient attention; I told you I was worried about my family; and you showed me what was going on in the infirmary. I don't see how you could go from _that_ to thinking I'd appreciate you adding _his_ face to this argument. I really don't think you've thought it all the way through, because the _last_ thing John would want to do is encourage me to go along with your plan."

Tom had told him about Anne's little theory on why Alexis was showing such obvious effects of her non-human DNA, while the only thing Tom seemed able to do was perceive the Dorniya when no one else could. Looked like the ex and John had something else in common now, whether he liked it or not.

"Really don't think she did," he said, dryly, "considering I'm pretty sure _you're_ the one who dragged me in here. Which is the exact _opposite_ of what I was going for, actually. You were supposed to wake up so you could prove me wrong, not drag me down _with_ you. For a genius, you can really be an idiot sometimes."

Tom's head whipped back around, quickly enough that John was sure he'd have heard vertebrae popping if they'd been in the waking world. "What do you ... _John_?" he exclaimed, eyes still dark with turbulent emotion.

"Guilty as charged," John shrugged, then glanced toward the alien again, frowning at its still-confused posture. "A little confused here myself, though. I get Lexie still being out, our girl held up half a hallway long enough to keep a bunch of people from getting crushed, but it don't seem like talking in circles really compares to all that heavy lifting. What the hell's the hold up?"

The alien masquerading as Tom's dead wife sighed, then shook her head at them. "We already discussed this, Tom. I don't see how bringing another person into our argument is going to change the fact that the cancer's coming back, or what our options are for dealing with it."

That ... had almost made sense, except for the last bit. "Cancer?" John raised his eyebrows at Tom.

Tom sighed, shaking his head. "Metaphors and resonances, remember? Not long after you left, Cochise called back to say he'd reached his father, and that the greater Volm are detaching a ship to take care of the power plant on the moon within the week. I guess the Dorniya had still been hoping I'd come up to take care of it personally, because — as best I can figure out from the few things she's dared say directly — we're still too strong, and the Espheni leader only exposes itself if it believes they've already conquered a planet, or next best thing to it. If they hang back when the power blows, and I don't go up, the Dorniya have no chance of targeting it with their doomsday weapon until things get a whole lot worse down here — and it has to be the leader, because it's the one in contact with the entirety of the Espheni race, not just the local network."

"Wait, wait. Have they even figured out how not to target the rebels? Or the Skitterized kids?" John shook his head. "I thought you were still arguing the method, not the delivery timing!"

Tom swallowed, looking guilty, and John's vision nearly whited out in fury at what that implied. "Except she _can't_ figure that out, can she? And she still won't let you wake until you come to some kind of agreement, nevermind what you told Porter."

"Not — necessarily agree," Tom said, haltingly. "She just ... wants me to make _a_ decision."

The strain lines around his eyes and mouth deepened further, and John understood instantly. "Yeah, sure. Bet she's been trying to tell you how much it's worth it, though; to save your other kids, and the rest of humanity. What's a few lives in place of thousands, and even more on _other_ planets?"

"But if it only took out the spikes — if it was just me, and the rebel Skitters, who were founded by a Skitterized Dorniyan to begin with, and let's not forget how many humans they killed before that, even Red Eye —"

John could tell — or at least, he hoped — by the pained lines around Tom's eyes and the hesitation in the way he said the words that he _wanted_ John to tell him he was wrong; that billions of lives weren't worth that sacrifice, no matter how much logic told him it was the only responsible way forward. What a change; _Tom_ using _John_ for a substitute conscience, rather than the other way around.

He clapped both hands to the sides of Tom's face, staring him straight in the eye. "Are you _insane_?"

"Uh — what?" Tom blinked, briefly knocked off his self-martyring track.

Good. John shook his head gently, and repeated himself, willing Tom to hear. "I said, are you insane, Mason?"

Tom blinked again, then seemed to abruptly remember when John had said that to him before, and gave him a faint smile. "If I am, then I guess we'll have that in common," he replied, echoing that day outside the hangar.

"No shit," John replied, dropping his hands to Tom's shoulders and giving a harsh laugh. "The first time you said that to me, we were at probably our lowest point; the day after I tried to run you off into the woods, the day before you tried to kill me over a fucking trinket and I walked rather than admit I'd been in any way wrong. We've both learned a few things since — but that one basic fact hasn't changed. So I don't know why the _hell_ you thought it was a good idea to put that question on my shoulders."

Tom stared at him a moment longer; then his faint smile turned into a low chuckle of his own, and he leaned forward to rest his forehead against John's. "Because you're a selfish son of a bitch, and because you promised to always question my decisions," he said, warmly.

"You're damn right I am," John snorted. "So you know what I'm gonna say. Hell, you told her five minutes ago; the _last_ thing I'll do is encourage you to go along with this suicidal plan of hers. There's got to be some intervening step between full-on martyrdom slash genocide, and leaving the whole damn 'network' in place ..."

He trailed off rather abruptly as that sparked a new chain of thought, reminding him of something else he'd wanted to ask, and he pulled back to stare wide-eyed at Mason. "Network ... why did you use the word network?"

"Because ... it is?" Tom frowned at him. "I get the sense that ... the Espheni are connected to the shadow plane like nodes in a web; the ones in charge hold more and deeper connections than others, but they're all linked together in a greater pattern, with their leader in the center. If we attacked one of the commanders on Earth, we'd only get its immediate peers. Each one can only infect the ones they're connected to directly, and the doomsday infection would burn too shallowly to make the jump off-planet. But if we got the _queen_ ..."

"Queen?" That was the first he'd heard the term.

Tom shook his head, frowning. "I don't know why I said that — I don't know how I know this. Maybe I'm picking it up from her, but ... I just _know_ that's how their species works."

John gnawed his lower lip, the half-formed idea he'd had on the way back from Richmond brewing in his thoughts again. "You know, I knew a guy who knew a guy in prison — hacker type, knew a lot about _computer_ networks. Got caught for some damn fool offline stunt; warden didn't know what he had, and let him at the library computers. He didn't stick around long. Anyway — he told me once, there's two kinds of viruses at heart. Ones that attack _across_ the network — frying computers, cyberlocking 'em, stealing information, whatever. Which sounds a lot like what the Dorniya's trying to do."

He glanced toward the woman in the doorway again — only to find her suddenly standing a lot closer, staring up at him intently with her arms crossed over her chest. "Go on," she said lightly, lifting her eyebrows at him. "It's always interesting, listening to Tom discuss his passions with someone who shares them."

That was ... a slightly surreal comment, considering that the Dorniya apparently liked to stir up old echoes of things Tom's wife had actually said to make its point. Did that mean he was on the right track? He shook that off, disturbed, and continued. "Right. Anyway ... the others attack the network _itself_. Denial of service, error pages all over, that kind of thing. I was just thinking about something I read in one of those books of yours, the Art of War, about armies needing to hear each other. And it occurred to me ..."

Tom sucked in a sharp breath. "'Because they could not hear each other, they made gongs and drums'," he quoted; "'because they could not see each other they made pennants and flags' ... the shadow plane is _the_ way they communicate. The Espheni don't vocalize; they barely use their radio sense, especially since we started experimenting with jamming them; they don't _have_ any equivalent substitute. It'd destroy their ability to command their mechs and Beamers, their method of controlling the Skitters, the Skitters' ability to enslave our children, anything and everything except their individual muscle power. Which still is considerable, but ..."

"Nothin' compared to what we can do to them in return. And more importantly, won't kill your kid or his friends, just inconvenience 'em for a while," John grinned, then lifted an eyebrow at the Rebecca avatar again. "Fry their ability to connect, but leave 'em alive. Sooner or later they'll have to send more to investigate. If this shit hangs around in their systems like a real virus, and some of those carry it away to report back to this queen…."

Rebecca's eyebrows were halfway up her forehead; she glanced between him and Tom, and then broke into a sudden, brilliant smile. Very briefly, her image flickered, the woman replaced for a second or two by a slimy-looking thing with grey-brown skin, huge eyes, and all too many legs and arms; then the face of Tom's wife was back, and she leaned up to kiss them both on the cheek before speaking directly for the first time since John had joined the conversation. "I _did_ say our child had chosen better than we could have imagined; but even then I had not guessed how much. That would _truly_ be justice: a lonely, lingering and inevitable dwindling into the dark, helpless before everyone they ever harmed." Her voice was fierce as she spoke the last few words.

Then she shook her head and slipped back into Rebecca's phrasing, warmly amused and affectionate toward her husband. "The tide's going out, Tom; but you have a little time. Try not to miss the sunrise tomorrow; it should be spectacular."

Just as she finished speaking, she shot a sideways look at John, and nodded to him; then the room dissolved around him just as quickly as it appeared, dumping him back into reality with no warning.

* * *

They hadn't taken him far when he'd passed out, at least; John woke still latched onto Tom's wrist with a white-knuckled grip, sprawled beside him on the thin mattress of a gurney. The straps had been removed; apparently, John joining him had had the same effect. There was a joke to be made there, but he was too fried to work out the details.

"Man. Anyone get the number of the bus that hit me?" he groaned, rubbing at his eyes with his free hand.

"Sorry about that," a much rougher voice replied; then the wrist he was holding onto turned in his grasp until callused fingers threaded through his. "Didn't know I could do that."

" _King_ of chaos," John reminded him with a snort, locking gazes with the man in the next bed.

"Guilty as charged," Tom replied, eyes twinkling as his mouth curved in a smile.

"Pope? _Dad_?" a voice from the hallway broke in on the moment, and they both turned to look into the very relieved face of Ben Mason. "GUYS! They're awake!"

"Ben! No yelling in my infirmary; your family aren't the only ones in here!" another voice called back; Anne, the sound of whose hurried footsteps approaching belied her scolding, low-voiced words.

John chuckled and sat up slowly, keeping hold of Tom's hand. "Hey, simmer down, kid; my head hurts. Seems your dad's not content with having Storm slash Jean Grey for a daughter, and — whatever Spiderman/ Wolverine graft you're supposed to be for a son. He's decided to go all Charles Xavier on us; it's turning into a whole mutant convention in here."

"'Decided' implies I had a choice in the matter," Tom said dryly, slowly levering himself to a seated position beside John, squinting at his middle son. "Hey — how'd the battle go? The one here, I mean. I'm guessing Richmond went okay, since you're both in one piece?"

"The battle here went _fine_. A little damage, but nothin' that can't be repaired," the gruff voice of Dan Weaver answered from the other side of the room; he was still in the same seat he'd been in before. "We were a little more worried about _you_. What the hell happened to you, Tom?"

"The Dorniya," Tom said, shaking his head, then squeezed John's hand. "She contacted me, like I thought she might, but we had a pretty fundamental difference of opinion on what to needs to happen next. John broke the stalemate, though. Dan — I think we've come up with an idea that might actually win us this war."

"What sort of idea?" Anne asked, crowding into the small space with Tanya right behind her, and the other three — Hal, Maggie, and Matt — squeezing in around them.

"We'll have to test it to make sure, but — they said they'll give us a weapon that will cut off the Espheni's ability to communicate with each other. They won't be able to coordinate attacks, or impose their will on any Skitters, or give orders to their mechs ..."

"In short, _they're_ gonna be the caveman in our caveman versus the astronaut argument, for a change," John said, rubbing at a throbbing temple with his free hand. It sure _felt_ like there were cavemen battling inside his skull; he hadn't had a headache that bad since the time he'd been interrogated by Karen when he was on his own between Richmond and the hospital in Waverly. Hopefully, neither head-trip had done him and his all-human DNA any permanent damage.

" _You_ came up with this idea?" Maggie replied skeptically, then turned to Tom. "Are you _sure_ you weren't just hallucinating his involvement? You were out for a really long time, you know."

"Hey!" Tanya objected, turning to her indignantly, jabbing her shoulder with one petite hand. "That's my dad you're talking about!"

"Girls, girls ..." John started to object, then laughed at the ridiculousness of the situation. Step-sisters-in-law squabbling over the parents, sort of, almost; a potent reminder that his choice wasn't just loading _him_ down with a bunch of awkward new step-relatives. He was sharing them with Tanya, too.

"Uncle John?" the youngest daughter-figure of the Mason pack asked, voice breaking on a yawn. "Are you okay?"

John glanced over to see Lexie rubbing sleep out of her eyes; the white streak in her hair was much thicker now, but the soft affection and worry in her face was still one hundred percent Mason. Accept no substitutes, dilutions, or corruptions: they'd proven the hard way that the Mason brand always shone through.

"Yeah, sweetheart, I'm fine," he beamed at her across the room. "Your sisters are just being ridiculous." Then he turned that irrepressible smile on someone much closer by. Maybe he was letting the atmosphere go to his head again, the way he had at that party right after they took Jacksonville; maybe he'd have second thoughts again later; but _maybe_ he didn't give a damn anymore.

"Hey, Mason," he said, clearing his throat.

"Yeah, Pope?" Tom cocked an expectant eyebrow at him.

John traced his eyes all over the familiar features, again; the stress lines and laugh lines, the grey threads working their way into his dark hair and closely trimmed beard, the light in his eyes as he looked at John. All those years of struggling for respect, spitting in the face of anyone who wouldn't give it, and all it had taken to sate that starving hunger was _that_ look on the face of a man who'd once been his nemesis. He'd have to be a fool to piss all that away over a few qualms about what might or might not happen if the shine ever wore off.

If their story had been a romance flick, this would have been the moment when he got all teary-eyed and asked his lover to marry him, like any good reformed bad boy with a heart of gold. But even laying aside the fact that while they might be _from_ Massachusetts, they were living in South Carolina, _not_ one of the states that had legalized gay marriage before the aliens' arrival, and Tom had just spent most of a year making a big deal about upholding the old laws wherever possible until they could be changed by legal process — apocalyptic dramas played by different rules. If he begged fate that way he'd doom himself to going out in a blaze of glory, and it'd be a tossup whether the history books would record him as the tragically heroic First Husband, or the ungovernable ex-con with a bad track record who didn't deserve any tears their perfect President might shed.

Let Hal be the one to bend the knee for Mags on the eve of eternity; he'd seen the kid sneak into a wrecked pawn shop during their scouting trip, and come out pocketing a box too small to hold a gun. John had a different sort of affirmation to offer.

"When I said 'whither thou goest', I really wasn't anticipating a trip into the ol' grey matter. Keep me out of it next time, would you? I'm not in that big a hurry to get to the 'aught but death' part, and my head is _killing_ me."

The corners of Tom's eyes crinkled more deeply; message received. "Well, we can't have that, can we," he replied, dryly. "Shall I kiss it and make it better?"

Ben made a gagging noise, shattering the moment with the force of his teenage indignation. "You're flirting again? _Now_? Is this really the time?"

John cast a sardonic eye at him. "Know a better time for it than right after you both thought you were gonna die, and right before you go out to do it all over again? No? Didn't think so."

"He does have a point, though. I did promise to report as soon as I knew more about what the Dorniya wanted," Tom sighed regretfully, then began the slow progress of untangling himself from John's grip, the sheets, and the monitors hooked up to him. "Dan, if you'll gather the usual suspects in my office?"

"You sure? You been down for a half a day, at least," Weaver replied, getting up out of his chair.

"No time like the present," Tom rasped. "Although — you look as wrung out as I feel. Something happen to you, too?"

"Don't worry about me. I'm fine," Weaver tried to wave that away.

Of course, that was a stupid thing to do in the infirmary with Anne standing right there. "No, you're not," she said, with a stern, fond expression, laying a hand on the colonel's arm. "I won't stop either of you from walking to Tom's office, because I know how important this is, but I'll send Lourdes to Marina to do the gathering. You don't need to be running around and straining yourself just yet."

"Is that your professional, medical opinion, Doctor?" Weaver scowled at her.

"Considering it's only been a year and a half or so since your entire cardiovascular system was under attack by an alien parasite, and it's becoming pretty obvious that there was some collateral damage? Yes," she replied, sternly. "Now sit back down; and if you're still standing when I come back in here, my second request will be accompanied by a sedative."

"Yes, _ma'am_ ," Weaver sighed, and sank back down. John saw the quickly hidden relief in his expression, though, and was pretty sure Anne had made the right call.

"Anyone else have something urgent to say?" Tom said, looking around at the others with a pointed eyebrow.

The frozen tableau in the room fell apart at that question, as the others all ducked in for a hug and a quick avowal that they were all OK. John sighed, then turned and slid off the gurney, ducking to retrieve their rifles from where someone with some brains had stashed them under Tom's bed. Then he sidled over to stand by Lexie's bed and wait out all the base-touching, comfort-seeking, relief-expressing emoting going on.

The girl herself had almost drifted back under after her brief greeting, but she opened her eyes again on a yawn when John glanced down at her. "I did it, Uncle John," she said quietly, almost glowing with self-confidence. A better contrast to the day after her dad's kidnapping, he couldn't have wished for.

"I heard, yeah. That practice paying off already, huh?" He patted her hand.

"They're still afraid," she nodded slowly on her pillow. "But some of them are glad, too. It feels really nice."

"It does indeed," he replied, as her eyelids drooped shut again. Out of the mouths of babes. "It does indeed."

* * *

The second debriefing on the matter of the Dorniya was quite a bit shorter than the first had been. It didn't take Tom long to summarize the new developments, and what it would mean in context with the success of Cochise's request for help from his father.

"We'll test it on a regular Skitter first; provided that goes well, all we'll have to do is be in place outside Greensboro or one of the other Espheni strongholds, maybe the nearest school, when the Volm arrive and the power plant goes down. Jab the Overlord with it — and they'll lose both their tech _and_ their connection to each other all at once. This war will go from an uphill struggle against a better armed and more numerous foe, to an extermination mission almost overnight," he concluded, voice almost throbbing with intensity and conviction.

The VP replied first; she was usually the voice of caution, but her expression was fraught with hope. "And if the test doesn't work? If these Dorniya are misleading us?" she asked, clenching her hands together.

"Then the power plant still goes down, and we still have a better chance than we do now. And before you ask, if the Volm let us down, too — Dr. Kadar tells me we have a Beamer mostly patched back together, and plenty of rebel Skitters willing to assist us in taking the moonbase down ourselves. And if _that_ falls through, we just keep doing what we've been doing all along while we think up something new. There's no real downside, here."

Peralta pressed her lips together, then glanced beseechingly at the general.

General Porter sighed, then nodded. "I'll support this, with a few conditions. You're not going to the beach alone tomorrow; even if you trust the Dorniya, you said they were worried about being overheard, so that point's non-negotiable. And I don't think you should be on the mission to deliver the weapon either, if it comes to that."

"Way ahead of you there," John spoke up. "I'm going with him in the morning — the Dorniya shouldn't object to that, since it met me today — and we'll have the Berserkers and Hal's crew all staking out the approaches. As for Greensboro — I'd suggest sending Captain Marshall's crew again with some of the First Continental. Marshall's gonna be keen for a win after what happened to Hathaway, and the Second Mass could sure use the break."

"Amen to that," Maggie muttered.

Weaver glanced at her, then around at all the rest of them, and finally nodded. "I don't like it; but Tom's right, there's not much of a downside if we take a few precautions. One thing you haven't mentioned, though. Any indication what the Dorniya plan to do if we _do_ take down the Espheni?"

Tom shrugged expansively. "The one I've spoken to hasn't said much; they seem to have lived mostly for revenge since their planet was conquered. Help us, I would hope; they obviously have some pretty advanced technology, and we're going to need _some_ kind of boost to get the world back on its feet before any hope of maintaining at least some of our pre-war cultures collapses entirely. If that does happen, I'll probably resign; we'll need to hold an election, but I get that you're worried about her having constant access to the President's mind, and I agree. I'm sure I'll find _some_ way to continue contributing, though."

"Oh, no doubt," Weaver said dryly. "Professor Emeritus at some new United Nations University, or something?"

"Oh, I'd hope for something a little more hands-on than _that_ ," Tom snorted — then threw a sidewise glance at John, as if to include him in the joke.

"If you didn't, I'd drag you to Dr. Glass to have your head examined," John grinned back. " _Again_."

Half the table laughed in agreement, folding John in as if his voice actually held equal weight in their council.

The day after the world ended, there'd only been one thing John had wanted: revenge. At the time, he'd thought that meant killing every single Skitter he came across.

But that wasn't true, was it? There was a saying that living well was the best revenge ... and in that moment, he was finally ready to believe that it might be the truth.

* * *

Sometime later that evening, once the last of the day's business was done, Tom led the way back to the infirmary to check in with their kids before setting the alarm for dawn and laying down to try and get some rest. Matt and Tanya had voiced the intention to finish off _Watership Down_ with Lexie, and it had sounded like the others intended to hang out there to keep them company, an informal family night before whatever might come next.

They heard Tanya's clear voice rising and falling as they entered the old store, and followed it back to Alexis' cubicle. The rest of the infirmary's residents had fallen quiet, listening; John followed Tom in equal silence, the two of them placing their feet as carefully on the tile as if scouting in the woods. A glimpse through the doorway showed Hal and Maggie seated on Tom's old bed, their hands linked, and a spark of light winking from one of Maggie's fingers; Ben and Denny seated cross-legged on a cabinet; Matt at the foot of Alexis' bed; Lourdes seated next to Lexie, running a brush through her hair; and Tanya holding forth to all of them from the middle of the room, turning the last pages in the worn old paperback.

Tom smiled at the scene, a soft light in his eyes as he stared at their collective and adjacent offspring, then backed quietly away. "I just wanted to see them — I don't want to interrupt."

"They're a pretty good group of kids," John murmured. "No matter what happens next, they've got the stuff to get through it."

"Think so, huh?" Tom turned that luminous smile at him.

"'Course. Add Jeanne and her boy and you've got all the next generation of Clan Mason in there. Even if we fell off the face of the planet tomorrow, the Espheni wouldn't stand a chance."

"Then let's make sure they don't have to," Tom said, and reached out, hooking John by a belt loop to pull him in close.

John's pulse rushed loudly in his ears, almost drowning out his daughter's reading as they threw themselves into that kiss. Making all the promises John wouldn't speak aloud, conveying Tom's answers without making hostages of them to fate.

"Bed?" he said hoarsely after a long minute, flushed from head to toe with yearning.

Whatever happened the next day ... for once in his life, John Pope was at peace.

Behind them, Tanya's voice rose as she read the last few sentences.

* * *

 _(as to the east, a strange spaceship all spherical shapes and grey-on-white tones dipped under low cloud cover toward the ocean, a glowing cylinder full of engineered pathogen waiting for delivery in its hold)_

* * *

 _(as to the west — galactically speaking — a Volm warship veered from the defense of their people's home fleet, one more link in a chain of very strange events connecting them to a world that should have been nothing but yet another backwater in this war)_

* * *

"The wind freshened, and soon myriads of dry beech leaves were filling the ditches and hollows and blowing in gusts across the dark miles of open grass.

"Underground, the story continued."

-(END)-


End file.
